“Have you come to fetch me?” she said.
“Yes,—if you can bear to come. My father is ready, and Lucy is getting so weak. Will it be too much for you to come to-day?”
“There can be no better day,” said Amethyst, as she walked away with him. Sylvester looked very tired and sad. He did not speak till they came near the house, then he looked round at her and said huskily—
“The dear boy has not much more to suffer.”
Amethyst silently put her hand in his, and so let him lead her in.
If she had lately seen, in its worst form, the terror of death, what she saw now was indeed “Death as a friend.”
The quiet room, full of flowers and subdued light, the preparations for the Holy Feast; Lucian’s fair face, white and peaceful.
He looked at Amethyst and smiled, while Mrs Leigh kissed her and drew her to her side, and at once the service was begun. It was an hour of which Amethyst never spoke, but which she never forgot to her life’s end.
When it was over, he made a little sign, and she went up to him, and took his hand, then he smiled again and said—
“Good-bye;” and then—“Say the verse now, Amethyst—‘amethysts unpriced.’”