"Hope nothing, young lady," replied the old nobleman; "I do not deceive myself. Nevertheless, you shall stay, if you so will, because I know that it may be a satisfaction to you hereafter, and to him, my son, even now. Yet it is cruel to inflict upon you, so young, so tender, and so well assorted to sights of hope, and joy, and life, and expectation, scenes of sickness, and suffering, and of death. Yet if you will, it shall be so."
Alice turned a little pale, but still she firmly pressed her request; while her father and her promised husband gazed upon her with looks of love, and tenderness, and approbation. "Mistress Bertha," she said, after again repeating her wish to remain, "you will let me share your cares, and with a little instruction from you I doubt not to prove skilful in my new employment."
"More skilful than I am, lady," replied Bertha; "for I was never made for soothing or for tenderness. I seek it not myself when sickness or when pain seizes on me, and I am not fitted to give it to others. Nevertheless," she added, in a lower voice, "you may perhaps find a moment to teach that dying man to prepare for the world to which he is speeding. I have lived long enough in this land, which I once thought given over to perdition, to believe that salvation may be found by even those who do not believe all that the Church of Rome would have them. Seek a moment to speak to him, young lady; seek a moment to point out to him that all the earthly compensation he can now make is nothing when compared with the faults he has committed. Tell him he must find an atonement, that he must seek for an intercessor; and show him that that intercessor cannot be gained but by full faith and trust in Him."
"I will," replied Alice. "Indeed, I will lose no opportunity;" and she kept her word. At the reiterated request of the surgeon, the chamber was soon after cleared, while a lawyer was sent for from the county town to supply the place of the Earl's own attorney. No person was left in it but one; and the task of sitting by the sick man's side was fulfilled by Alice at her own choice.
Sir Walter went on to the Manor House, promising to return ere night; and Langford sat in a chamber below, consulting with the rector and others concerning the best means of tracing out his lost brother. But in the meanwhile Alice, watching by the Earl, while he strove ineffectually to gain even a brief interval of sleep, pondered in her own mind how she might accomplish the great object she had promised to attempt; how she might even touch upon a subject from which, but a few moments before, when mentioned by the rector, she had seen the sick man start away with impetuous vehemence, apparently judging that all appeal to Heaven's mercy was too late, and determined not only to brave fearlessly once more death which he had so often tempted, but to encounter unshrinkingly the "something after death" which he believed his own acts to have loaded with all the wrath of Omnipotence.
After tossing for a long time, with great restlessness and apparent pain, sleep fell for a few minutes upon the Earl's eyes; and, when it was over, though it had lasted so short a time, he turned to Alice with a smile, saying, "Oh, how blessed a thing is sleep! Could heaven itself be sweeter than slumber after restlessness and agony?"
"Oh, yes," replied Alice, "I think so; for here, rest requires labour, or fatigue, or pain, to make it sweet: there, the enjoyment must be pure and self-existing, requiring no contrast. However, we know little of such subjects. God grant that we may all know such a state hereafter."
The Earl gazed thoughtfully in her face for a few minutes, and then said, "Alice, do you think that those who meet in the same place hereafter, will each know the other?"
"Oh, doubt it not!" cried Alice, eagerly; "doubt it not! It were sin to doubt it. Heaven could not be heaven without those we love."
"Then, Alice," cried the Earl, with his brow darkening and his eye straining upon her--"then, Alice, what would it be to meet, with all one's crimes laid bare, a long, long train of those we have injured or oppressed--the slighted, the broken-hearted, the wronged, the insulted, the slain! Could hell itself be worse than that?"