The colonel turned away and looked out of the window at the East India steamship.
"'Tis a pity!" he sighed, in an undertone, after a while. "I should have liked to ask her forgiveness."
Although upon Stella's arrival, when he felt better, he had spoken continually and with apparent satisfaction of his approaching death, from the time when he began to decline rapidly he avoided all reference to his condition. The doctor visited him daily, sometimes oftener, and would drink a glass of sherry with him while recounting his brilliant exploits in the way of restoration to health of patients whose condition was even worse than the colonel's. But after a while he grew less confident, and at last towards the end of April he proposed an operation for the relief of the lungs. The colonel eyed him fixedly, and sent Stella out of the room.
"How long a time do you give me?" he asked. "Be frank. I am a soldier, and not afraid to die."
"Under the circumstances, a couple of months."
"I understand. Say nothing to my daughter, but let matters take their course. It is all right."
That evening he sat writing for an hour, never stirring from his writing-table. Suddenly he grew restless, and ended by tearing up what he had written.
"Stella, come here!" he called; and as she came to him, "Don't cry, darling,--it distresses me so that I lose my wits; and I need them all. I wanted to write out my will; but it is useless. Your little property is secure, and you must divide the rest: I cannot show you any partiality. It is terrible to think of dying here, but, if it must be, do not leave me in Venice, in a strange country. Bury me near you in Zalow,--your mother knows the spot; she will bear with me in the churchyard." He took a little golden locket from his breast-pocket. "Take care of that," he said: "it is the locket your mother sent me in the campaign of '59, and she must hang it around my neck before they lay me in the grave. Beg her to do this. Do you understand, Stella?"
She sat opposite him at the little round table, very pale, but perfectly upright and without a tear, just as he would have had her.