“You said once that Genevra was not dead. Did you mean it, Katy?”
Frightened and bewildered, Katy turned appealingly to her father-in-law, who answered for her, “She meant it—Genevra is not dead,” while a blood-red flush stained Wilford’s face, and his fingers beat the bedspread thoughtfully.
“I fancied once that she was here—that she was the nurse the boys praise so much. But that was a delusion,” he said, and without a thought of the result, Katy asked impetuously, “if she were here would you care to see her?”
There was a startled look on Wilford’s face, and he grasped Katy’s hand nervously, his frame trembling with a dread of the great shock which he felt impending over him.
“Is she here? Was the nurse Genevra?” he asked. Then, as his mind went back to the past, he answered his own question by asserting “Marian Hazelton is Genevra.”
They did not contradict him, nor did he ask to see her. With Katy there he felt he had better not; but after a moment he continued, “It is all so strange. I thought her dead. I do not comprehend how it can be. She has been kind to me. Tell her I thank her for it. I was unjust to her. I have much to answer for.”
Between each word he uttered there was a gasp for breath, and Father Cameron opened the window to admit the cool night air. But nothing had power to revive him. He was going very fast, Morris said, as he took his stand by the bedside and watched the approach of death. There were no convulsive struggles, only heavy breathings, which grew farther and farther apart, until at last Wilford drew Katy close to him, and winding his arm around her neck, whispered,
“I am almost home, my darling, and all is well. Be kind to Genevra for my sake. I loved her once, but not as I love you.”
He never spoke again, and a few minutes later Morris led Katy from the room, and then went out to give orders for the embalming.