“No, let me stay,” she said, calmly; “let me nurse you.”
“Leave me; I once loved you better than life, than duty, than Heaven; but I have struggled with a passion, wrong in its excess, criminal in the husband of another. I have learned to govern it—to subdue it; but do not come between me and better thoughts, do not drag me back to earthly feelings. Let me voluntarily renounce the dearest, sweetest thing on earth; let me prove my sincerity to myself. Leave me!”
She rose, and though she longed to linger there, she passed from the bed-side, after one soft pressure of his feverish fingers.
“Farewell, till we meet above,” said she, and went from the room. She did not, however, leave the house; but as soon as she went down stairs, she sent off Nest and the servant, who had driven them, over to the town to find the parish priest, and beg him to visit the dying man.
Whatever friendship could suggest to soothe his pain, or pastoral prayer and counsel could afford to support and guide him aright, was granted him. But it was not till toward the afternoon, that the fierce pain subsided, and he became calm. Then they knew that death was rapidly advancing.
In the gray twilight, Hilary and Maurice returned home together, leaving the friend and companion of their youth a quiet corpse. After years of disappointment, anger, remorse, and repentance, he slept in peace.
Hilary cried quietly nearly the whole drive home; she could not help it. It was not only painful regret, or sorrow for the dead; but old thoughts had been revived, old feelings, buried happiness, vanished hopes, the gay visions of youth, all seemed suddenly awakened at this painful meeting. And it is an awful thing to stand by the bed of one whose wild passions, ungoverned
temper, and wasted youth, have brought on disappointment and death, even though we may hope they have ended in true penitence and faith. We may hope, but we must tremble too!
Mr. Barham was sitting one afternoon with his youngest daughter, who was amusing herself, with childish pleasure, over some brilliant flowers, when the second post came in, and brought him a letter from Maurice.
Captain Duncan wrote him for directions as to the corpse of his son-in-law. His yacht had come into harbor the day after the storm, and the captain suggested that they should carry the deceased owner round to Bristol, as to the nearest port to “the Ferns,” from whence the corpse could be transferred, according to Mr. Barham’s pleasure. They waited his orders, as the guardian of Charles Huyton’s widow.