"Stoop very low, Heather."
I did stoop.
"I said last night 'the evening of life'—the night has come. You will keep my secret always? Promise."
"Yes," I said.
He smiled at me again and then closed his eyes.
The doctor came back. Suddenly he bent forward and put his hand on my father's hand and felt where his pulse ought to be, and then he said to me:
"Come away, my dear," and I went.
They asked me downstairs, those two who waited, what my father had said, and what had happened, but I only replied: "I will keep his secret—we must all keep it—for his dear sake."
I have kept it to this day. I am a happy wife and mother now, and the old things are passed away. I never see Lady Helen, and I am glad of that. I like to forget that she ever came into my life, and into father's. Father, of course, is very happy, happier than any of us. I talk to my children about him on Sunday evenings, and we wonder together what he is doing in the land where there are no secrets, and where no one is misunderstood.
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