"Oh, no; mamma and Uncle Carlyle came with me. Mamma!"—he suddenly looked around, then broke from St. Leon's clasp and ran to the door—"mamma, come back!" he called. "Why did you run away?"
St. Leon leaned on his elbow and watched the door impatiently, his breath coming and going in great strangling gasps—his heart full of trembling anticipation.
"What does it mean? Will she forgive me? Will she come back to me?" he asked himself, in a bewildering maze of hope and anxiety.
Laurie opened the door and ran out into the hall. He came back in a moment, and before he entered St. Leon heard the echo of a loved, familiar footstep beside that of the child. The color rushed into his face. His heart beat tumultuously.
"Why did you run away, mamma?" the child was still repeating as they came across the threshold hand in hand.
St. Leon had heard that she had been very ill after the shock of his supposed death that dreadful night. He had drawn some hopeful auguries from the news at first. Perhaps she loved him still, perhaps she would relent and come back to him. But he had waited so long for a sign from her that he had fallen into despair again. The sight of her now, as she came into the room, revived the dying embers of hope within his breast.
To his fond, adoring eyes she had never looked more lovely despite the closely cut curls and the extreme pallor of her face. She came across the floor holding the child by the hand, and as she met the imploring gaze of his eyes her own seemed to swim in a fine glittering mist of unshed tears. She stood there silently a moment, and he waited humbly to hear her speak—to pronounce his doom, as it were, for it seemed to him that fate itself hung on those tender, wistful lips. In that moment of passionate suspense and longing it seemed to him that he experienced something of the feelings that must have thrilled her that terrible night when she had prayed him for forgiveness and he had coldly put her away.
"It is retribution," he said to himself, while the cold dew of agony beaded his brow.
She was holding Laurie's hand tightly clasped within her own. Once, twice, she raised it to her lips, then suddenly she laid it quickly in St. Leon's palm and withdrew her own. Her voice had a strange, almost dying sound as she said:
"You saved my life, St. Leon. Ay, you did more—you would have given your life for mine! Do not think me ungrateful. Do not believe that I could forget what I owe you. I am come to make reparation. You would have given me your life. See! I give you what is dearer than my life to me—the heir to Eden!"