“You see what you have driven me to!” cried Catherine, the moment I was left alone with her. “I hope you are satisfied.”
The words went to my very soul. But when I looked at her, her eyes were wandering about over the ceiling, and I had and still have difficulty in believing that she spoke the words, and that they were not an illusion of my sense, occasioned by the commotion of my own feelings. I thought it better, however, to leave her, and join the others in the sitting-room. The first thing I saw there was Thomas on his knees, with a basin of water, washing away the blood of his grandson from his daughter’s floor. The very sight of the child had hitherto been nauseous to him, and his daughter had been beyond the reach of his forgiveness. Here was the end of it—the blood of the one shed by the hand of the other, and the father of both, who had disdained both, on his knees, wiping it up. Dr Duncan was giving the child brandy; for he had found that he had been sick, and that the loss of blood was the chief cause of his condition. The blood flowed from a wound on the head, extending backwards from the temple, which had evidently been occasioned by a fall upon the fender, where the blood lay both inside and out; and the doctor took the sickness as a sign that the brain had not been seriously injured by the blow. In a few minutes he said—
“I think he’ll come round.”
“Will it be safe to tell his mother so?” I asked.
“Yes: I think you may.”
I hastened to her room.
“Your little darling is not dead, Catherine. He is coming to.”
She THREW herself off the bed at my feet, caught them round with her arms, and cried—
“I will forgive him. I will do anything you like. I forgive George Everard. I will go and ask my father to forgive me.”
I lifted her in my arms—how light she was!—and laid her again on the bed, where she burst into tears, and lay sobbing and weeping. I went to the other room. Little Gerard opened his eyes and closed them again, as I entered. The doctor had laid him in his own crib. He said his pulse was improving. I beckoned to Thomas. He followed me.