“Only to make you well, father,” replied Madelaine, smiling: and she led their old friend from the room.
“He spoke as if he wanted my forgiveness,” said Vine as he walked slowly back, noting as they went the kindly deference paid to them by those they met.
“Mr Van Heldre, father?” said Louise gently.
“Did I speak aloud, my child?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Ah, these thoughts are too keen, and will not be crushed down. Yes, child, yes. My forgiveness, when it is I who should plead, for all the horrors of the past, plead for his forgiveness, Louise. He must have suffered terribly to be brought down to this.”
Louise looked wistfully in her father’s face, whose sunken cheeks and hollow eyes told of mental suffering greater far than that which their friend had been called upon to bear.
“Will time heal all this agony and pain?” she asked herself; and it was with a sigh of relief that she reached the gate, and her father went straight to his chair, to sit down and stare straight before him at the sunlit grate, as if seeing in the burning glow scene after scene of the past, till he started excitedly, for there was a ring at the gate-bell.
Louise rose to lay her hand upon his shoulder.
“Only some visitors, or a letter,” she said tenderly.