“‘The way of transgressors is hard,’ as we both have learned,” he muttered, with a deathly smile, “and I deserve it all. I am sorry for you, Joan, but I cannot help you. If it consoles you, you may remember that, whereas your sorrows and shame are but temporal, mine, as I fear will be eternal. And now, since you refuse to forgive me, farewell; for I can talk no more, and must make ready, as best I can, to take my evil doings hence before another, and, I trust, a more merciful Judge.”
Joan turned to leave the room, but ere she reached the door the rage died out of her heart and pity entered it.
“I forgive you, father,” she said, “for it is Heaven’s will that these things should have happened, and by my own sin I have brought the worst of them upon me. I forgive you, as I hope to be forgiven. But oh! I pray that my time here may be short.”
“God bless you for those words, Joan!” he murmured.
Then she was gone.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
A GHOST OF THE PAST.
Lady Graves sat at breakfast in the dining-room at Rosham, where she had arrived from London on the previous evening, to welcome home her son and her daughter-in-law. Just as she was rising from the table the butler brought her a telegram.
“Your master and mistress will be here by half-past eleven, Thomson,” she said. “This message is from Harwich, and they seem to have had a very bad crossing.”
“Indeed, my lady!” answered the old man, whose face, like the house of Graves, shone with a renewed prosperity; “then I had better give orders about the carriage meeting them. It’s a pity we hadn’t a little more notice, for there’s many in the village as would have liked to give Sir Henry and her ladyship a bit of a welcome.”
“Yes, Thomson; but perhaps they can manage something of that sort in a day or two. Everything is ready, I suppose? I have not had time to go round yet.”