“You do not know,” he said. “Your husband——”
She stopped him by a gesture.
“My husband would be the first to bid me return good for evil. You know Randolph very little if you do not know that. Conrad is dying, and death wipes out much. He is about to answer for his life to a higher tribunal than ours. Ah! let us not condemn him harshly. Have we not all our sins upon our heads? When my turn comes to answer for mine, let me not have this one added—that I hardened my heart against the dying, and denied the help and succour mutely asked at the last hour.”
“Monica,” said Tom, with one of those swift changes that marked his manner when he was deeply moved, “were I worthy, I would kiss the hem of your garment. As it is, I can only say farewell. God be with you!”
He was gone before she could open her lips again. She stood in a sort of dream, feeling as if some strange thing were about to happen to her.
Night fell upon the castle and its inhabitants, but Monica could not sleep. If ever she closed her eyes in momentary slumber, the same vivid dream recurred again and again, till she was oppressed and exhausted by the effort to escape from it. It was Conrad, always Conrad, begging, praying, beseeching her to come. Sometimes it seemed as if his shadowy form stood beside her, wildly praying the same thing—to come to him—to come before it was too late.
At last she could stand it no longer. She rose and dressed. The clock in the tower struck four. She knew she could sleep no more that night. Why should she not take the watch beside the unconscious dying man, and let the faithful Wilberforce get some rest?
She stole noiselessly to the sick room. There had been no change in the patient’s state. He lived, but could hardly live much longer. Wilberforce would fain have stayed, but Monica dismissed her quietly and firmly, preferring to keep her watch alone.
Profound silence reigned in the great house—silence only broken from time to time by the reverberating strokes of the clock in the tower, or by the sudden sinking of the coal in the grate and the quiet fall of the cinders. There was something inexpressibly solemn in the time, the place, and the office thus undertaken by Monica.