"And the letter--what is it?" asked Yeldham, with all the agonising anxiety and entreaty which he felt in his voice. Katharine laid one hand heavily upon her breast, and breathed deeply.
"It tells him that I ask his forgiveness, as I have long granted him mine; it is to ask his permission to return, and do my duty to him in the future, as I never did it, or understood it, in the past. Mr. Yeldham, what is my husband's message to me?"
He rose, came towards her, caught her hands in his, and said hoarsely, while unheeded tears ran down his face:
"His message to you is the message of a dying man to one who holds his life in her gift--of one who loves you with an immortal love; to whom life has been sheer unmitigated agony without you; to whom it has no hope, no ambition, no desire, but your pardon. It is the prayer of the sick for health, of the famishing for food, of the shipwrecked for a sail. 'If I should never see her face again,' he said last night, 'let me look upon a face which has looked upon hers;' and I am here, Katharine,--I am here!"
He held her hands in a grasp tight even to pain while he spoke; now he released them. She covered her face with them, and sobbed aloud.
Trembling with delight, he stood by until her emotion had subsided. Then he said:
"Never was ambassador so happy to find his mission useless and superseded. God for ever bless you for the words you have spoken. Let me leave you now; I must write to Robert. Will you send your letter, or shall I? Perhaps," he went on gravely, "you had better let me enclose it. He has been ill, and even the best-managed communication of such unlooked-for happiness will try him; though joy never kills, they say, it may harm him. Don't be anxious; remember you will bring him health and happiness and life."
He took up the letter, once more caught her hands in his, and reverently kissed them; told her he would be with her on the morrow at an early hour, and left her--feeling like a man who walked in a dream.
His success had been so immeasurably beyond his hopes! His success? what nonsense was he talking to himself? It had not been his success, but that of circumstances, of an accident--the success of time, of experience, of conscience. How happy Robert would be! How "pure womanly" she was, with her loftiness and her lowliness, her beautiful compassion, her rapid generous impulse, her ready self-accusation, and thoroughness of reparation! How beautiful too--how very, very beautiful, in her sombre dress! deep mourning too! the sort of mourning widows wear in France, if he did not mistake--of course she had passed as a widow--a gloomy dress, but she was too beautiful to heed it. When would she go to England, he wondered; would she return with him at once? he might ask her to-morrow. That would be very soon; but he must go,--delay was impossible; and she was likely to do at once any thing she had made up her mind to do at all.
Yeldham's excitement remained so long upon him, that it was difficult to him to write the few lines to Robert which were necessary. At length he scrawled them.