But for that strange chance of Delafield's appearance in her path--a chance no more intelligible to her now, after the pondering of several feverish hours, than it had been at the moment of her first suspicion--where and what would she be now? A dishonored woman, perhaps, with a life-secret to keep; cut off, as her mother had been, from the straight-living, law-abiding world.
The touch of the old man's hand upon her hair roused in her a first recoil, a first shattering doubt of the impulse which had carried her to Paris. Since Delafield left her in the early dawn she had been pouring out a broken, passionate heart in a letter to Warkworth. No misgivings while she was writing it as to the all-sufficing legitimacy of love!
But here, in this cold neighborhood of the grave--brought back to gaze in spirit; on her mother's tragedy--she shrank, she trembled. Her proud intelligence denied the stain, and bade her hate and despise her rescuer. And, meanwhile, things also inherited and inborn, the fruit of a remoter ancestry, rising from the dimmest and deepest caverns of personality, silenced the clamor of the naturalist mind. One moment she felt herself seized with terror lest anything should break down the veil between her real self and this unsuspecting tenderness of the dying man; the next she rose in revolt against her own fear. Was she to find herself, after all, a mere weak penitent--meanly grateful to Jacob Delafield? Her heart cried out to Warkworth in a protesting anguish.
So absorbed in thought was she that she did not notice how long the silence had lasted.
"He seems to be sleeping," said a low voice beside her.
She looked up to see the doctor, with Lord Uredale. Gently releasing herself, she kissed Lord Lackington's forehead, and rose to her feet.
Suddenly the patient opened his eyes, and as he seemed to become aware of the figures beside him, he again lifted himself in bed, and a gleam most animated, most vivacious, passed over his features.
"Brougham's not asked," he said, with a little chuckle of amusement. "Isn't it a joke?"
The two men beside him looked at each other. Lord Uredale approached the bed.
"Not asked to what, father?" he said, gently.