We followed quickly to the porch, to look after him. But he strode off
so fast that Cornelius had to run to keep up with him. He did not once
look back, even when he passed out of sight at the street corner. I
believe he divined that his wife would not be among those looking
after, and that he wished not to interpose any other last impression
of his dear home than that of her kiss.
When we came back into the hall, she had flown. Later, as my mother
and I went through the garden homeward, passing beneath Margaret's
open windows, we heard her weeping--not violently, but steadily,
monotonously, as if she had a long season of the past to regret, a
long portion of the future to sorrow for. And here let me say that I
think Margaret, from first to last, loved Philip with more tenderness
than she was capable of bestowing upon any one else; with an affection
so deep that sometimes it might be obscured by counter feelings
playing over the surface of her heart, so deep that often she might
not be conscious of its presence, but so deep that it might never be
uprooted:--and 'twas that which made things the more pitiful.
Tom and I went out, with a large number of the town's people, to watch
the rebel soldiers depart, and we saw Philip with his company, and
exchanged with him a smile and a wave of the hat. How little we
thought that one of us he was never to meet again, that the other he
was not to see in many years, and that four of those years were to
pass ere he should set foot again in Queen Street.
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