“No,” he said; “I’m dead—they believe I’m dead. Let them think so still. Some day I may go to them and tell them the truth, but now let them think I’m dead.”
“Which they do now,” said the old woman.
“What do you mean?”
She hesitated to tell him what had taken place, but he pressed her fiercely, and at last he sat trembling with horror and with great drops bedewing his brow as she told him of the finding of the body and what had followed.
It was only what he had planned and looked for, but the fruition seemed too horrible to bear, and at last a piteous groan escaped from his breast.
That night, after the old woman had gone, the food she had obtained from his old home remained untouched, and he lay there upon the sand listening to the sighing wind and the moaning and working of the waves, picturing the whole scene vividly—the finding of the body, the inquest, and the funeral.
“Yes,” he groaned again and again, “I am dead. I pray God that I may escape now, forgotten and alone, to begin a new life.”
He pressed his clasped hands to his rugged brow, and thought over his wasted opportunities, the rejected happiness of his past youth, and there were moments when he was ready to curse the weak old woman who had encouraged him in the chimerical notions of wealth and title. But all that passed off.
“I ought to have known better,” he said bitterly. “Poor, weak old piece of vanity! Poor Louise! My sweet, true sister! Father!” he groaned, “my indulgent, patient father! Poor old honest, manly Van Heldre! Madelaine! my lost love!” And then, rising to his knees for the first time since his taking refuge in the cave, he bowed himself down in body and spirit in a genuine heartfelt prayer of repentance, and for the forgiveness of his sin.
One long, long communing in the gloom of that solemn place with his God. The hours glided on, and he still prayed, not in mere words, but in thought, in deep agony of spirit, for help and guidance in the future, and that he might live, and years hence return to those who had loved him and loved his memory, another man.