"My forgiveness?"
"For the past. For your lost wife. But for me she might not have died. My long illness has brought reflection home to me, and--and repentance: as I suppose hopeless illness does to most people: showing me things in their true light; showing me the awful mistakes and sins the best and the worst of us alike commit. Say that you forgive me."
"Lady Ellis," he said, his countenance assuming a solemn aspect as he looked straight at her, "I have far more need of forgiveness myself than any other can have: I saw that at the time; I see it always. My wife was mine; it was my duty to cherish her, and I failed; no one else owed obligation to her. The chief blame lay with me."
"Say you forgive me! I know she has, looking down from heaven."
"I do indeed. I forgive you with my whole heart, and I pray that we may, as you say, meet hereafter--all our mistakes and sins blotted out."
"I pray it always. Cyril knows I do. He was the first to lead me--ah, so kindly and imperceptibly!--to the remembrance that our sins needed blotting out. It was during a six weeks' visit he paid me with his sister. Few in this world are so good and pure and loving as Cyril Thornycroft. Fare you well, Robert Hunter! fare you well for ever."
"For ever on earth," he added. Another pressure of the poor weak hand, a warm, earnest look, a faint thought of the Heaven that might be attained to yet, and Robert Hunter turned away, and woke up to the world again.
His cold coffee stood in the drawing-room when he got back. He sat a short while with the two young ladies, very quiet and absorbed. Cyril was not there. Mary Anne inquired what was the matter with him.
"That poor woman upstairs," he briefly answered; "she seems so near to death, but I think she is prepared for it."
Mary Anne Thornycroft simply looked at him in reply; the manner and look were alike strange. Robert Hunter sipped the cold coffee by spoonfuls, evidently unconscious what it was he was doing.