" And she laughed a little,
and then added:
"Oh, Frank dear, I wonder if you will think of me before you marry Annie
Guthrie. Wherever I am I shall be thinking of you."
And now that time which she foresaw has come, and Heaven knows that I
have thought of her, poor dear. Ah! those footsteps of one dead that
will echo through our lives, those woman's footprints on the marble
flooring which will not be stamped out. Most of us have heard and
seen them at some time or other, and I hear and see them very plainly
to-night. Poor dead wife, I wonder if there are any doors in the land
where you have gone through which you can creep out to look at me
to-night? I hope that there are none. Death must indeed be a hell if the
dead can see and feel and take measure of the forgetful faithlessness of
their beloved. Well, I will go to bed and try to get a little rest. I
am not so young or so strong as I was, and this wedding wears me out. I
wish that the whole thing were done or had never been begun.
What was that? It was not the wind, for it never makes that sound here,
and it was not the rain, since the rain has ceased its surging for a
moment; nor was it the howling of a dog, for I keep none. It was more
like the crying of a woman's voice; but what woman can be abroad on such
a night or at such an hour--half-past one in the morning?
There it is again--a dreadful sound; it makes the blood turn chill, and
yet has something familiar about it.
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