At last he falls asleep, and Lady Etwynde sits there, sad and anxious and full of grief for the two lives whose short years have held such bitter suffering—before which now stretches the gulf of an eternal parting.
The sky grows rosy with the dawn, the sunlight steals in through the closed blinds, and plays about the quiet room, and Lady Etwynde softly opens the window, and the cool fresh air steals in, and its breath plays over the pallid young face that lies on the pillows, looking like sculptured marble. Quite suddenly he lifts his languid eyelids and looks eagerly, joyfully up. "She is coming!" he cries. "I know it."
The hours pass on, but that inward conviction remains unshaken. Something—some mysterious prescience for which he cannot account—tells him that his darling will be by his side. He is quite patient now, and quite calm—calm with the fulness of a great content. The day passes on to noon and noon to even-tide. He asks no more that question: "Will she come?" He knows it is answered.
The door opens softly and without sound. He is lying with closed eyes—the hired nurse is by his side. Lady Etwynde is not there.
Some one comes in and moves towards the bed, and bends over the quiet figure. How still he is; is it sleep, or——?
The lids, with their long, dark lashes, suddenly open and looking back to her own with the old boyish, adoring love that nothing can chill or change, are the "bad blue eyes" of her girlhood's lover.
She sinks on her knees; she is trembling greatly; she finds no words to say, but none are needed.
Pain, weakness, weariness, seem to flee away before the magic of her presence; over the white face comes such radiance and tenderness as never has she seen.
"It is you. I knew you would come, Lorry."
"My darling boy!" she half sobs, half sighs, and then a great darkness sweeps over her like a cloud, and she sees his face no more.