“I have learnt to love Lucy. It has appeared to me in these few months’ sojourn with her, that I have stood to her in light of a mother. William Vane,” she solemnly added, keeping her hold upon him, “I shall soon be where earthly distinctions are no more; where sin and sorrow are no more. Should Lucy Carlyle indeed become your wife, in after years, never, never cast upon her, by so much as the slightest word of reproach, the sin of Lady Isabel.”
Lord Vane threw back his head, his honest eyes flashing in their indignant earnestness.
“What do you take me for?”
“It would be a cruel wrong upon Lucy. She does not deserve it. That unhappy lady’s sin was all her own; let it die with her. Never speak to Lucy of her mother.”
The lad dashed his hand across his eyes for they were filling.
“I shall. I shall speak to her often of her mother—that is, you know, after she’s my wife. I shall tell her how I loved Lady Isabel—that there’s nobody I ever loved so much in the world, but Lucy herself. I cast a reproach to Lucy on the score of her mother!” he hotly added. “It is through her mother that I love her. You don’t understand, madame.”
“Cherish and love her forever, should she become yours,” said Lady Isabel, wringing his hand. “I ask it you as one who is dying.”
“I will—I promise it. But I say, madame,” he continued, dropping his fervent tone, “what do you allude to? Are you worse?”
Madame Vine did not answer. She glided away without speaking.
Later, when she was sitting by twilight in the gray parlor, cold and shivering, and wrapped up in a shawl, though it was hot summer weather, somebody knocked at the door.