"Yes. She has confessed, Paul."
"No, no!" And there was agony in his voice. "No, no! Better I should die than that she should!"
"No; but, Paul, it was another—a woman named Emily Dodson. You were right, you see, in your defence. He had deceived her, wronged her, and she killed him. She confessed it last night. It's all written down and signed. Don't you understand, my love?"
"Then, then——?"
"I congratulate you, Mr. Stepaside!" It was the governor of the gaol who spoke. "Thank God, the news has come in time! Yes, my lord, of course you can speak to him."
"Paul, my son." And his heart thrilled at the sound of his father's voice. "Thank God! Thank God! Will you shake hands and forgive me?"
It seemed to Paul at that moment as though the foundations of his life were broken up.
"Oh, God, I thank Thee!" he cried, "Oh, Mary, Mary! My love!" And again he strained the young girl to his heart.
For many days Paul Stepaside's mother lay sleeping calmly in the room where sickness had confined her. Her face was tranquil, the lines which had been so deep a few weeks before had passed away. She had been unconscious ever since the day on which Mary had made known to her the terrible suspicion which filled her mind. Sometimes there had come to her minutes when the past became partially real, but those minutes were only as dream phantoms. She knew nothing of what had taken place, did not seem to realise that Mary Bolitho had been in the house with her, or that the man to whom she had given her heart long years before slept beneath the same roof. She knew nothing either of the agony through which they had passed or of their feverish endeavours to save her son. She suffered no pain. She simply lay there as though nothing mattered and as though the windows of her mind had been closed.
The nurse sat by her bedside watching her. The doctor had been that morning, and had remarked that he saw no change either one way or the other.