ANNETTE LYLE’S OHRISTMAS GIFT. 429
only increased his determination, while agitating him to a degree too great for his frail
strength to bear. So, after further useless
argument, his step-son relinquished the attempt,
and sadly retired, unshaken in his resolve, but
obliged to postpone the discussion of it.
In the hall he met the little seamstress. He bowed gravely, with a dignity and distance he had never used before.
Her sweet face flushed up at the change in his manner. His coming had been a ray of} sunshine in her dull existence; and utterly ignorant of life and herself, she could not help showing how it had warmed and cheered her, and now how the sudden change in his manner pained her. But, preoccupied as he was, he did not notice this, He went on his way with- out further notice of her, depriving Annette of half her happiness. He had been so king, and her life was so lonely, her tasks were so hard—what had she done to offend him? The tears came into her eyes as she thought of it all.
The white tempests of December came, and Mr. Johnson was dying. It was Christmas-eve, but there was no feasting or gayety in the house, usually so full of ijight and mirth at such a time. The little seamstress cowered over the grate in her own chamber, to which she had retreated, and with her head buried in her hands, strove to shut out the groans of mortal agony, heard even above the sighing of the wind, from the distant sick-room.
It was not the first sad Christmas she had known; but she had never felt so wholly forlorn, so utterly alone before. Her one friend, whose voice had been so gentle, whose eyes had been so true, was strangely changed and distant; the coming death seemed almost to have cast its fatal chill over them all.
When morning dawned, the sufferer lay at last released from pain, but feeble, and sinking fast. All the household were summoned to his pillow. Mrs. Johnson herself, with strange consideration, came for Annette, and led her thither.
The dying man turned his eyes upon them as they entered, and seemed, by a gesture, to desire them to come nearer. Charles Dean, who was bending above the bed, rose and came over to them.
“My father wishes to bid you farewell,” he said to Annette.
The child put out a trembling hand.
“He desires to say,” he went on, ‘that he acknowledges you as the daughter of his late father, and the heiress and rightful owner of this property; and he beseeches your pardon, if he has unjustly withheld it, and your prayers that he may die in charity with all men.”
She fell on her knees and burst into tears. She tried tospeak. It was only inarticulately, however, that she uttered the desired words. The sick man heard her voice, a smile passed over his face—he was dead.
Charles Dean led her from the room to another, ‘where she sat alone and distressed, till, after awhile, the servants came to know her wishes. She was their young lady now, and the mistress of the mansion. How strange it all seemed!
The old housekeeper was most garrulous in explaining the restitution. It was a grand “Christmas gift,” she said.
“A Christmas gift!” The words rang in the girl’s shrinking ears through all the week that followed. She had her place among the chief mourners at the great funeral, for her relationshij, and all the claims of her position were conceded at once. But she felt herself a usurper and an outcast through it all. Her Christmas gift was ruin to the man she held first and best on earth. It was the downfall of his mother’s hopes and pride; it was destruction to the happiness of others dearer than herself. No wonder she pined and drooped beneath the burden of her new possessions; no wonder she would gladly have resigned them.
This was in her mind, when Charles Dean, after the funeral, asked an interview, to ex- plain to her all that pertained to her new in- heritance, and to take his own and his mother’s leave.
The thought was horrible to her. She had never dreamed of such a change, but had hope- fully thought of being able to return to them, by gradual means, all of which she had robbed them—of becoming at least their trusted friend and companion—of yielding her own claims, and so purchasing the right to enjoy the sweet shelter of their kindness and protection.
When she found how irresistible was the manly will opposed to hers, she went weeping and despairing to his mother. Mrs. Johnson would have been more than human to be able to conceal how much her abdication cost her. But she, also, was inexorable. She was too just and right-minded to desire to enjoy another’s wealth.
That night the little heiress was gone.
In a very simple and touching letter she bade adieu to the place she had loved so well, and in which she had still been so forlorn and alone; to the people once so kind, yet now cruel to
