CHAPTER XXXVIII.
RETRIBUTION.
Lady Despard and Lord Cecil stood beside the marquis’ bed, at which, still holding the hand now slowly growing cold, Doris knelt. Death, whom the old man, with the stubborn obstinacy of the Stoyle race, had hitherto kept at bay, was drawing near, very near. They had carried him from the adjoining room, speechless and sightless, and so he had remained through the long hours of the night. It was morning now, and white and weary with all she had undergone, Doris saw the rosy streaks faintly penetrating the window shutters.
Now and again the valet or the doctor, or perhaps Cecil, moistened the old man’s lips; and now and again Doris smoothed the pillow, which might have been of stone for all it mattered to the head that rested on it. On the bed, and clasped tightly between the rigid fingers, were the papers which proved her right to the title of a peer’s daughter, and beside them the will which might make her the mistress of the Stoyle wealth. Suddenly, quite suddenly, as if, though appearing so incapable of effort, the old man had been battling in the darkness for consciousness and strength, the marquis opened his eyes and looked at her.
“Doris!” he said. “Mary!”
“I am here!” she said, inaudibly to all but him.
His fingers closed on her hand. “Cecil—all who are here!” They drew closer to him, and he flashed his dim eyes upon them. “Listen to me. These are my last words. I—I acknowledge this lady to be my—my daughter—the child of my wife, Lucy!” A spasm shot across his face. “My will—the will which leaves all to her—is my last. Remember—remember! My daughter—my child!” His eyes closed, and they thought he was dead, but his lips opened again, and Doris, if no other, heard the words that struggled from them. “Lucy! Lucy! forgive! I am punished—punished!”
These were the last words of the great Marquis of Stoyle, who had all his life boasted that he had earned the title of “wicked,” whose heart had never once melted until death came to turn it into the dust to which even penitence and remorse are impossible!
The wicked flourish as the bay-tree, and the truly good are unable to live through persecution. If any one imagines that Mr. Spenser Churchill was utterly annihilated by the disclosure of his pretty plot, that person is very little acquainted with the peculiar character of which Mr. Spenser Churchill was a prominent type. For a week or two the good man betook himself to Paris, and there, in that quiet and peaceful spot, soothed his troubled spirits with, doubtless, pious reflections; but shortly afterward he emerged from his retreat, and the papers of London announced that the great philanthropist would deliver a lecture at Exeter Hall to aid the funds of the Broken-winded Horses’ Society. The subject of the lecture was to be a glorious and inspiring one: “Truth.”