“I did come out earlier. But I have been with Duffham.”
Moving his chair a little nearer to hers, he spoke to her long and earnestly. In all that was said there seemed to be a solemn meaning—as is often the case when the speaker is drawing to the confines of this world and about to enter on the next. He referred a little to the past, and there was some mutual explanation. But it seemed to be of the future that Sir Geoffry had come chiefly to speak—the future of Baby Arthur.
“You will take care of him, Mary?—of his best interests?” And the tears came into Mary Layne’s eyes at the words. He could not really think it necessary to ask it.
“Yes. To the very utmost of my power.”
“I am not able to leave him anything. You know how things are with us at the Grange. My wish would have been good——”
“It is not necessary,” she interrupted. “All I have will be his, Sir Geoffry.”
“Sir Geoffry! Need you keep up that farce, Mary, in this our last hour? He seems to wish to be a soldier: and I cannot think but that the profession will be as good for him as any other, provided you can like it for him. You will see when the time comes: all that lies in the future. Our lives have been blighted, Mary: and I pray God daily and hourly that, being so, it may have served to expiate the sin—my sin, my love, it was never yours—and that no shame may fall on him.”
“I think it will not,” she softly said, the painful tears dropping fast. “He will always be regarded as Colonel Layne’s son: the very few who know otherwise—Mr. Duffham, Colonel and Mrs. Layne, and Lady Chavasse now—will all be true to the end.”
“Ay. I believe it too. I think the boy may have a bright and honourable career before him: as much so perhaps as though he had been born my heir. I think the regret that he was not—when he so easily might have been—has latterly helped to wear me out, Mary.”
“I wish you could have lived, Geoffry!” she cried from between her blinding tears.