At that anguished cry of love and agony, all fell back before the wife. She had crossed the room, she had fallen on her knees by the bedside, she had clasped the lifeless figure in her arms, her tears and kisses raining upon the still rigid face. All was forgotten, all forgiven—the bitter wrongs he had done her. Nothing remained but the truth that she loved him still, that he was her husband, and that he lay here before her—dying.
Dying! No need to look twice in the physician's sombre countenance to see that.
"He will not live an hour," he said, in answer to Norine's agonized asking look; "it is doubtful whether he will return to consciousness at all. There is concussion of the brain, and several internal injuries—any one enough to prove his death. Mortal aid is unavailing here."
Dying! Yes, even to Norine's own inexperienced eyes the dreadful seal was yonder on the face among the pillows. His wife's arm encircled his neck, her face was hidden on his bosom, a dull, dumb, moaning sound coming from her lips. He lay there rigid—as if dead already—all unconscious of that last agonized embrace of love, and forgiveness, and remorse.
The doctor left the room, waiting without in case his services should be needed. Norine dispatched a messenger to Mr. Gilbert, another for a clergyman. He might return to reason, if only for a moment before the spirit passed away.
"He cannot—he cannot die like this!" she cried out, wringing her hands in her pain. "It is too dreadful!"
The doctor shook his head.
"Dreadful indeed. But 'the way of the transgressor is hard.' He will never speak on earth again."
Richard Gilbert came, almost as pale as the pale remorseful woman who met him. It was the physician who encountered and told him the story first. He entered the room. Norine stood leaning against the foot of the bed. Helen still knelt, holding her dying husband in her arms, her face still hidden on his breast. One look told him that the awful change was already at hand.
And so, with the three he had wronged most on earth around him, Laurence Thorndyke lay dying. Out of the hearts of the three all memory of those wrongs had gone, only a great awe and sorrow left. For Norine, as she stood there, the old days came back—the days that had been the most blessed of her life, when she had given him her whole heart, and fancied she had won his in return. Old thoughts, old memories returned, until her heart was full to breaking; and she hid her face in her hands, with sobs almost as bitter as the wife's own.