He waited for a moment while Jessie dried the tears
which Anne Rodway's simple diary had drawn from her warm young
heart, then closed the manuscript, and taking her hand patted it
in his gentle, fatherly way.
"You will be glad to hear, my love," he said, "that I can speak
from personal experience of Anne Rodway's happiness. She came to
live in my parish soon after the trial at which she appeared as
chief witness, and I was the clergyman who married her. Months
before that I knew her story, and had read those portions of her
diary which you have just heard. When I made her my little
present on her wedding day, and when she gratefully entreated me
to tell her what she could do for me in return, I asked for a
copy of her diary to keep among the papers that I treasured most.
'The reading of it now and then,' I said, 'will encourage that
faith in the brighter and better part of human nature which I
hope, by God's help, to preserve pure to my dying day.' In that
way I became possessed of the manuscript: it was Anne's husband
who made the copy for me. You have noticed a few withered leaves
scattered here and there between the pages. They were put there,
years since, by the bride's own hand: they are all that now
remain of the flowers that Anne Rodway gathered on her marriage
morning from Mary Mallinson's grave.
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