"No," her ladyship replied, "that she does not know. We have never told her. Rather we have let her suppose that he was about to be executed for some political crime. We could not tell her how base he was. Yet," she went on, "it seems that you and he met in prison--that you forgave him. Did you forgive him that?"
"Nay," replied Bertie, "I knew not what he had done, and only saw that his mind was gone. And, not knowing, I forgave. Now, Lady Ogilvie, I beseech you let me go to her!"
"First," she replied, "I must warn her that you are here. She is very ill; she cannot bear a shock."
"Is she as ill as that?"
"She is very weak and feeble. Perhaps now you have appeared again, come back almost from the very jaws of death, she may recover. Let us pray she will!"
Then she left him alone, saying she would soon return.
Agonizing as had been the long hours, weeks, months that he had spent alone in the chapel-room of the Bastille, and nearly as much alone in the calotte with De Chevagny, when, both heartbroken, they had sometimes scarcely exchanged a word for days, none had seemed more bitter, more unendurable, than the few minutes during which Lady Ogilvie was absent. For everything that he had gathered as to the state of Kate's health, since he had emerged into the world once more, pointed only too plainly to the fact that he had but found her again to again lose her, and to lose her this time beyond all hopes of recovery.
"Come," said Lady Ogilvie, returning to him--"come; she is now expecting you. I have prepared her. Come."
He followed her up the great stairs to the second floor, and there his companion opened the door and ushered him into a large, well-warmed and lighted room, and then left them.
Seated before the great fire, yet with her face turned eagerly towards the door as though watching for him, he saw her once again--saw the woman he had loved so long, the woman whom Fate had parted him from. She was thin, now, almost to attenuation--she, whose supple, graceful figure had once been one of her greatest charms--so thin that she looked more like a child that was unwell than a grown woman, and on her face there were no roses now.