Mr. Strafford knelt by the bed for a moment, and asked a heavenly guide for the poor wanderer on this his last journey, but he seemed to hear nothing and went on murmuring to himself,
"Ave Maria, gratia plena—"
When her friend was gone, and Mrs. Costello came back to her seat, he was still feebly repeating "pro nobis peccatoribus, pro nobis peccatoribus," with a faint trembling voice, as if even to the dulled faculties, through the deepening shadow of death, some faint distorted gleam of the truth had pierced, and the soul was, in truth, less torpid than the brain.
His wife sat by his side, and listened, deeply touched. She perceived that the part of his life with which she was associated, was dead to him; she could only stand aside and watch while the shadows of an earlier time gathered closely round him. But the more she understood this, the more a painful tenderness filled her heart towards him; she almost fancied that she had loved him all these years, and only found it out now that he had forgotten her. She began to grow impatient for Lucia's coming, and to long for the moment when she should be able to say,
"My child, this is your father."
The broad clear light of sunshine upon snow had begun to soften towards twilight when Lucia came.
Mrs. Bellairs brought her, but stayed below, that that meeting might have no witnesses. A trembling hand upon the lock warned Mrs. Costello, and she met her daughter at the door and brought her in.
Lucia had been struggling all day—ever since she knew that she was, at last, to see her father—to forget the one moment when they had met before; and all her efforts had been worse than useless. She came in, agitated and distressed, with the vision of that night clear and vivid before her recollection. So it was at the threshold. Her mother led her to the bedside, and the vision fled. Her eyes fell upon a face, little darker than her own, where not the slightest flush even of life-like colour remained, where a perfect calm had given back their natural nobleness to the worn features, and where scarcely a line was left to show the trace of life's sins or sufferings. She stood for a moment half bewildered. She knew that what she saw was but the faintest shadow of what had been, and, turning, she threw her arms about her mother's neck, and whispered,
"Ah, mamma! I understand all now."