At that moment Lucy and Archibald came in, on their return from their visit to Miss Carlyle. The dying boy looked up eagerly.
“Good-bye, Lucy,” he said, putting out his cold, damp hand.
“I am not going out,” replied Lucy. “We have but just come home.”
“Good-bye, Lucy,” repeated he.
She laid hold of the little hand then, leaned over, and kissed him. “Good-bye, William; but indeed I am not going out anywhere.”
“I am,” said he. “I am going to Heaven. Where’s Archie?”
Mr. Carlyle lifted Archie on to the bed. Lucy looked frightened, Archie surprised.
“Archie, good-bye; good-bye, dear, I am going to Heaven; to that bright, blue sky, you know. I shall see mamma there, and I’ll tell her that you and Lucy are coming soon.”
Lucy, a sensitive child, broke into a loud storm of sobs, enough to disturb the equanimity of any sober sick room. Wilson hastened in at the sound, and Mr. Carlyle sent the two children away, with soothing promises that they should see William in the morning, if he continued well enough.
Down on her knees, her face buried in the counterpane, a corner of it stuffed into her mouth that it might help to stifle her agony, knelt Lady Isabel. The moment’s excitement was well nigh beyond her strength of endurance. Her own child—his child—they alone around its death-bed, and she might not ask or receive a word of comfort, of consolation!