It might be as he said. And I saw that he would be incautious to the end.
At that moment Mrs. Lennard came in with something in a breakfast-cup. "You are a good lady," said Tom gratefully. "See how they feed me up, Charley!"
But for the hollow tones, the hectic flush and the brilliant eyes, it might almost have been thought he was getting better. The cough had nearly left him, and the weakness was not more apparent than it had been for a week past. But that faint, deep, far-away sounding voice, which had now come on, told the truth. The close was near at hand.
After Mrs. Lennard had left the room with the empty cup, Tom lay back on the sofa, put his head on the pillow, and in a minute or two seemed to be asleep. Presently I moved gently across the hearthrug to fold the warm, light quilt upon his knees. He opened his eyes.
"You need not creep, Charley. I am not asleep. I had a regular good sleep in the afternoon, and don't feel inclined for it now. I was thinking about the funeral."
"The funeral!" I echoed, taken back. "Whose funeral?"
"Mine. They won't care to lay me by my mother, will they?—I mean my own mother. The world might put its inquisitive word in, and say that must be Tom Heriot, the felon. Neither you nor Level would like that, nor old Carlen either."
I made no answer, uncertain what to say.
"Yet I should like to lie by her," he went on. "There was a large vault made, when she died, to hold the three of us—herself, my father and me. They are in it; I should like to be placed with them."
"Time enough to think of that, Tom, when—when—the time comes," I stammered.