"Oh, speak to me, beloved shades! Oh, my father! oh, mother, I want you so desperately! Come out of the past for a few seconds, and give me some words of comfort! I'm in such woful plight! If you could only know …"
But they could neither hear nor see me.
Then suddenly another figure stepped forth from behind the apple-tree—no old-fashioned, unsubstantial shadow of by-gone days that one can only see and hear, and that cannot hear and see one back again; but one in all the splendid fulness of life, a pillar of help and strength—Mary, Duchess of Towers!
I fell on my knees as she came to me with both hands extended.
"Oh, Mr. Ibbetson, I have been seeking and waiting for you here night after night! I have been frantic! If you hadn't come at last, I must have thrown everything to the winds, and gone to see you in Newgate, waking and before the world, to have a talk with you—an abboccamento. I suppose you couldn't sleep, or were unable to dream."
I could not answer at first. I could only cover her hands with kisses, as I felt her warm life-current mixing with mine—a rapture!
And then I said—
"I swear to you by all I hold most sacred—by my mother's memory and yours—by yourself—that I never meant to take Ibbetson's life, or even strike him; the miserable blow was dealt…."
"As if you need tell me that! As if I didn't know you of old, my poor friend, kindest and gentlest of men! Why, I am holding your hands, and see into the very depths of your heart!"
(I put down all she said as she said it. Of course I am not, and never have been, what her old affectionate regard made me seem in her eyes, any more than I am the bloodthirsty monster I passed for. Woman-like, she was the slave of her predilections.)