Clementina fancied the words were spoken with a malevolent sneer, and bit her lips with rage. The pitiable scene that met her eyes as she approached Doña Carmen's bedside pacified her for the moment. The poor woman's face was stamped by the hand of death; pale as a corpse, the nose pinched and white, the eyes glassy and sunk in a livid circle. Standing by her side was a priest, exhorting her to repentance. Of what? Her faithful maid, Marcella, stood at the foot of the bed crying bitterly, her face hidden in her handkerchief; and two other maids in the background looked on at the pathetic picture, frightened rather than sorrowful. The physician was writing a prescription at a table in the corner.
On seeing her daughter the Duchess turned to look in her face with an anxious expression, and held out a hand to her.
"Come close, child," she said, in a fairly strong voice. And she took Clementina's right hand in her own thin, waxen hands, and said, with a fearful fixity of gaze:
"I am dying, my child, dying. Do you not see it? Only so long as you are not glad of it."
"Mamma, dear mamma!"
"Say that you are not glad," she earnestly insisted, without ceasing to look in her daughter's eyes.
"Mamma, mamma, for God's sake!" cried Clementina, both bewildered and alarmed.
"Say that you are not glad!" she repeated, with increased energy, even raising her head with a great effort, and looking sternly at her.
"No, my beloved mother, no. If I could save your life at the cost of my own I swear to you I would do so."
The dying woman's dim eyes softened; she laid her head on the pillow, and, after a short silence, she said, in a weak, quavering voice: