"Well, I have not had so happy a life here," he unthinkingly remarked. "I ought not to murmur at exchanging it for another."
No, he had not. The words had been spoken without thought, innocent of intentional reproach; but she was feeling them to the very depths of her long-tried heart. Mrs. Chattaway was not famous for the control of her emotions, and she broke into tears as she rose and bent over him.
"The recollection of the past is ever upon me, Rupert, night and day. Say you forgive me! Say it now, ere the time for it shall have gone by."
He looked surprised. "Forgive you, dear Aunt Edith? I have never had anything to forgive you; and others I have forgiven long ago."
"I lie awake at night and think of it, Rupert," she said, her tones betraying her great emotion. "Had you been differently treated, you might not have died just as your rights are recognised. You might have lived to be the inheritor as well as the heir of Trevlyn."
Rupert lay pondering. "But I must have died at last," he said. "And I might not have been any the better for it. Aunt Edith, it seems to me to be just this. I am twenty-one years old, and a life of some sort is before me, a life here, or a life there. At my age it is only natural that I should look forward to the life here, and I did so until I grew sick with weariness and pain. But if that life is the better and happier one, does it not seem a favour to be taken to it before my time? Aunt Edith, I say that as death comes on, I believe we see things as they really are, not as they seem. I was to have inherited Trevlyn Hold: but I shall exchange it for a better inheritance. Let this comfort you."
She sat, weeping silently, holding his hand in hers. Rupert said no more, but kept his eyes fixed upwards in thought. Gradually the lids closed, and his breathing, somewhat more regular than when awake, told that he slept. Mrs. Chattaway laid his hand on the coverlet, dried her eyes, and busied herself about the room.
About half-an-hour afterwards he awoke. She was sitting down then, watching him. It almost seemed as if her gaze had awakened him, for she had only just taken her seat.
"Have they come?" were his first words.
"Not yet, Rupert."