He saw this little scene again now, and groaned aloud in his misery. He had killed them both, he was thinking—the two who had loved him—and bitter and unavailing regret and remorse filled his heart. His mad passion for May Churchill had blinded him to all sense of justice and right, and he had flung away the love which was truly his for the sake of a fair face that had always looked coldly at him.
And now it all came back to him! Elsie’s vain appeals and awful death, and he shuddered as he walked on; shuddered and stumbled amid his haunting visions of the past.
A pale-faced woman was standing, candle in hand, watching for him as he staggered toward the open door of Stourton Grange. This was his mother, who had grown uneasy at his prolonged absence, and was now peering into the mist and darkness looking for her only son. Presently she saw him; saw his haggard face, and his eyes full of remorse and gloom. She went forward to meet him; she took his cold, damp hand.
“My dear, are you not well?” she said, tenderly, as she led him into the hall, and put her candle down on the table. “You look ill, Tom, what is the matter?”
For a moment he looked at her, and then suddenly broke down, and a choking sob burst from his lips.
“Tom, come in here; I’ve a fire here,” went on Mrs. Henderson, putting her hand through his arm and leading him into the drawing-room. She made him sit by the fire; she got him what he required, and hung over him and tended him with her mother’s love strong in her breast, as though he had been the sinless child she had once cradled there.
She asked no questions, but presently she gathered from his half-incoherent words that Brown Bess was dead, and that he was weary of his life. She soothed and comforted him, and finally persuaded him to go to bed, but she did not leave him that night, nor for many nights to come.
Either the shock he had received, or some subtle poison floating in the damp, dank air, had struck him down, but before the morning he was in a high fever. And with extraordinary courage and devotion Mrs. Henderson nursed him alone. She sent for no doctor; she sought no help. She knew she was risking his life by doing this, but she knew also that his babbling tongue might reveal the dark secret of which she was only too sure. So no ears but hers heard the ghastly details of the tragedy on the ridge above Fern Dene.