"God bless you," she heard him mutter in a low, deep voice. "God bless you for your womanly compassion."
"Mr. Granger," she said a moment later, and still the sweet mouth trembled and her eyes were full of tears, "I have sent for--asked you to come to me--because I know so much of your past--your hopes. So much, too, of your unhappiness. Oh! Mr. Granger, I was Sophy Jervis's greatest friend."
"I know it," he murmured. "I know it. She told you all: Of my love--nay--it was not love, but idolatry!--of its too bitter ending. Though it is not, never can be ended."
"Ah! Mr. Granger, now you must live for other things. Live to see your wrongs redressed, your honour restored, your name cleared. You have heard from my husband that there is proof of your innocence."
"Yes," he said. "Yes, I have heard." But, still with his head bent, he whispered the same words he had said to Sir Geoffrey outside on the quarter-deck, "It is too late."
"No. No. It is not too late. Geoffrey and I have talked together, and to-morrow he will go to see their Lordships. Oh! Mr. Granger, if you could return to your old calling, if you could once more serve the King in these troublous times, even in a subordinate position, yet with hope before you, would you not do so? Would you not lead a different life?"
"God knows I would, bankrupt as are all my hopes, all my future. Yet--you are aware of what I have been? Of what I am?"
"Yes, I know," and, although he could not see it, there was in her face a look of sublime pity for him. Pity that this man, still young and handsome--how handsome he must have been when first he won Sophy's love she could well understand, even though judging only of him now as he sat before her in his desolation and abasement!--should have fallen to what he had.
"There is," he went on, "no baser thing in all this world than he who traffics in his fellow-men. Yet I elected to do it in my despair and bitterness. I might have earned a living otherwise, but this consorted with what I was, with what I had become."
"It is not too late. Will you not leave this life for--for--in memory of Sophy?"