“No, no, laddie, I never thought that,” she cried, and she looked at him with gentle, pitying eyes.
“I wad try to speak, to implore your forgiveness for the misery I had caused ye,” continued Robert, his husky voice heard faintly above the wail of the wind, which shook the lattice with a sort of stealthy clatter, like a midnight prowler striving to creep in to steal and plunder. “And in my dumb despair and anguish I would clutch at your floating garments only to have them vanish into air, and I would awake to find myself—alone—with my bitter remorse and sorrow.” A low, choked sob broke from his hollow breast—he covered his face with his hands. “Can ye ever forgive me?” he murmured.
Mary regarded him with infinite compassion, a heroic smile on her tired, quivering lips. “Freely do I forgive everything, laddie,” she replied, “an’ when I am gone I want ye to remember always that Mary Campbell had only love, pity and forgiveness in her heart for ye.” She raised her trembling hands solemnly. “May God bring peace to your troubled heart, laddie, and may your future dreams be filled with joy and happiness, of love and prosperity.”
“The door opened and Jean quietly entered the room.”
The door opened and Jean quietly entered the room, her tense, white face full of patient sorrow. She had sat in the kitchen for an eternity it seemed to the waiting woman, while Mary was taking her farewell of her husband. She had tried to talk to Gilbert, to interest herself in the news of home, but the words simply refused to leave her lips, and so she had sat there, listlessly watching the children playing around their uncle’s knee, her ears straining to hear some sound from the other room. No one knew how she suffered, to step aside, to welcome to her home his former sweetheart, to know they were there clasped in each other’s arms; and yet she did not feel bitter toward Mary somehow, strange as it might seem. She pitied her, she pitied them both, and it filled her with a strange feeling of surprise that she could feel so. Still loving Robert as fondly as she did, she could not help the feeling of despair which crept over her at times, to know, to fully realize, that she held only a secondary place in his affections, to hear him calling for another, for Mary. Sometimes in thought she caught herself bitterly arraigning him for his thoughtlessness, his apparent heartlessness; then the thought of his weak condition, his ill health, his distracted state of mind, these past months, tempered her judgment. He was hardly responsible for his actions, and if he were conscious of his own selfishness he had lost the power, the strength of will, to restrain his feverish impulses. She wondered vaguely if it would be different when—when she had passed away forever—if her memory would still come between them. She hoped not—she prayed that it might not be so.
Gilbert had left her to her silent musings, and had gone out to harness the horses. Returning, he told her that they must start at once, so she had opened the door to tell them, and as her eyes took in the misery which was reflected in their white, drawn faces she was moved to intense pity, and the tears rained slowly down her cheeks.
“Come, Mary, Gilbert says ’tis time to start,” she faltered. They both looked up slowly at the sound of her voice, then gazed dully into each other’s eyes. Presently Mary rose from her chair and stood up unsteadily, stretching out her little, cold, white hands to Robert, who clutched them in his own feverish palms as a drowning man clutches a straw.
“The time has come to part, laddie,” she said bravely, a wan little smile on her bluish lips.
A violent shuddering seized him, he did not move for a moment. Finally he staggered to his feet, and a quiver of agony passed over his face. He looked at her with dulled, glazed eyes and his face assumed a ghastly hue.