Her lips quivered, her kind eyes filled as she noted the tremulous voice, and the poor ghost of a smile as he looked in hers.
"Thank God! I can believe you yet. Sometimes I feel as if there was no truth in the world, when I remember how simple and innocent she seemed. And she was playing with my heart like a worthless toy, and never cared for me, never! I should have been miserable if she had become my wife, but I am miserable without her. I was true to—to—"
He turned away, unable to utter the name of the girl who had deceived him; and for the first time the full sense of his own conduct to Norah came to his mind, though conscience had reproached him before.
The girl stood weeping quietly, heedless of rain, of everything but Jack's misery, and her own longing to comfort him. She was pained to hear the man's sobs, and then a hollow, racking cough which followed them.
"Jack," she said, "you must not stay in this rain. Your clothes are soaked already. You have taken cold and need care."
"Why should I care?" he replied. "I have spent nearly all my time in this wood since she left; one night I fell asleep under a tree, and woke in the morning soaked through with dew."
"Jack, you are killing yourself!" cried Norah. "Come home with me. We can get to the house without being noticed, and my father and the boys will make you welcome."
How she succeeded in persuading him she could not tell; perhaps her firm hold of his arm was comforting; at any rate, he let her guide him where she would.
It was evident to Mr. Guiness that Jack was fearfully ill, and, owing to reckless exposure of himself, already in a condition of great danger, and hardly responsible for his actions. The doctor confirmed his worst fears. Jack was suffering from inflammation of the lungs; he came of delicate parents, who had died young, and it soon became evident that he had gone to Mr. Guiness's home to die also. Well for him that in his last days he had tender nurses, and was surrounded by true and loving hearts, for the boys, seeing their former friend so pitifully changed could think of nothing but their old happy times together, and even Rory was able to forgive him. It seemed terrible for the lads to think of death in connection with him who had been their model of all that was manly.
"You have forgiven me, Norah? May God bless you, and make you very happy!" said Jack, on the day he died. For answer she bent and kissed the dying lips again and again, and her kind hand was the last that Jack clasped in his.