“Yes, mother; oh, yes, mother dear. I have had a dream. Hold my hand, mother, and I will try and go to sleep again. I have had a dream. Everything is quite plain now. Hold my hand, mammy dear. I love you; you know that.”
He lay back again on his pillows and, exhausted, fell asleep.
Mrs. Lovel held the little thin hand and looked into the white face, and never went to bed that night. Ever since her sleep in the forest she had been perturbed and anxious; that mysterious bit of paper had troubled her more than she cared to own. She was too weak-natured a woman not to be more or less influenced by superstition, and she could not help wondering what mysterious being had come to her and, reading her heart’s secret, had told her to bid good-by to hope.
But all her fears and apprehensions had been nothing, had been child’s play, compared to the terror which awoke in her heart when she saw the look on her boy’s face as she bent over him that night. She knew that he bad never taken kindly to her scheme; she knew that personally he cared nothing at all for all the honors and greatness she would thrust upon him. He was doing it for her sake; he was trying hard to become a rich man some day for her sake; he was giving up Rupert whom he loved and the simple life which contented him for her. Oh, yes, because, as he so simply said, he loved her. But she laid too heavy a burden on the young shoulders; the long strain of patient endurance had been too much, and the gallant little life was going out.
On the instant, quick, quick as thought, there overmastered this weak and selfish woman a great, strong tide of passionate mother’s love. What was Avonsyde to her compared to the life of her boy? Welcome any poverty if the boy might be saved! She fell on her knees and wept and wrung her hands and prayed long and piteously.
When in the early, early dawn Phil awoke, his mother spoke to him.
“Philip dear, you would like to see Rupert again?”
“So much, mother.”
“Avonsyde is yours, but you would like to give it to him?”
“If I might, mother—if I might!”