"Let me see him at once."
"Come. His mother is with him."
He followed the Curé into a room sparsely furnished, and of unpolished pine-wood; a room on which there was no carpet and but little furniture; and there he saw the dying form of Philip Smerdon. Kneeling by the bedside, and praying while she sobbed bitterly, was a lady whom Lord Penlyn knew to be Smerdon's mother. She rose at his entrance, and brushed the tears from her eyes.
"You have come in time to see him die," she said, while her frame was convulsed with sobs. "He has been expecting you. He said he could not pass away until he had seen you."
Penlyn said some words of consolation to her, and then he asked:
"Is he conscious?"
The poor mother leant over the bed and spoke to him, and he opened his eyes.
"Your friend has come, Philip," she said.
A light came into his eyes as he saw Penlyn standing before him, and then in a hollow voice he asked her to leave them alone.
"I have something to say to him," he said; "and the time is short."