The woman went to the inner room and returned. "She is sleeping," she said, "and is very quiet."
Father Capel beckoned to the Advocate, who followed him to the bedside of the dying woman. She lay so still that the priest lowered his head to hers to ascertain whether she was breathing.
"Life appears to be ebbing away," he whispered to the Advocate; "she may die in her sleep."
Quiet as she was, there was no peace in her face; an expression of exquisite suffering rested on it. The sign of suffering, denoting how sorely her heart had been wrung, caused the Advocate's lips to quiver.
"It is I who have brought her to this," he thought. "But for me she would not be lying in a dying state before me."
He was tortured not only by remorse, but by a terror of himself.
Notwithstanding that so many years had passed since he last gazed upon her, she was not so much changed that he did not recognise in her the blooming peasant girl of Zermatt. Since then he had won honour and renown and the admiration and esteem of men; the best that life could offer was his, or had been his until the fatal day upon which he resolved to undertake the defence of Gautran. And now--how stood the account? He was the accomplice of the murderer of his own child--the mother of his child was dying in suffering--his wife was false to him--his one friend had betrayed him. The monument of greatness he had raised had crumbled away, and in a very little while the world would know him for what he was. His bitterest enemy could not have held him in deeper despisal than he held himself.
"You recognise her?" said the priest.
"Yes."
"And her child, Madeline, was yours?"