“It is our turn to part now, Mary. I must be gone.”
Her sweet face was almost distorted with the efforts she had been making to keep down emotion before the child. She burst into tears, as her hand met Sir Geoffry’s.
“God bless you! God bless you always, my darling!” he murmured. “Take my thanks, once for all, for the manner in which you have met the past; there is not another woman living who would have done and borne as you have. This is no doubt our last meeting on earth, Mary; but in eternity we shall be together for ever. God bless you, and love you, and keep you always!”
A lingering hand-pressure, a steady look into each other’s eyes, reading the present anguish there, reading also the future trust, and then their lips met—surely there was no wrong in it!—and a farewell kiss of pain was taken. Sir Geoffry went out, buttoning his overcoat across his chest.
A fly was waiting before Mr. Duffham’s house; the surgeon and Arthur were standing by it on the pavement. Sir Geoffry got inside.
“Good-bye, Sir Geoffry!” cried the little lad, as Mr. Duffham, saying he should be at the Grange in the morning, was about to close the door. “I shall write and tell papa how good you’ve been, to give me your own Bible. I can write small-hand now.”
“And fine small-hand it is!” put in old Duffham in disparagement.
Sir Geoffry laid his hand gently on Arthur’s head, and kept it there for a minute. His lips were moving, but he said nothing aloud. Arthur thought he had not been heard.
“Good-bye, Sir Geoffry,” he repeated.
“Good-bye, my child.”