'Mother, are you better?' asked Winefred. 'Can you see who is before you?'
'Yes, you are here.'
'Not I alone. Here is father.'
Jane looked at Mr. Holwood. Perhaps she was too shaken, too exhausted to manifest the resentment that had possessed her. She looked at him steadily, without hate, but also without affection in her eyes.
'Jane, my wife,' said he in a faltering voice, 'I also have done wrong, and like you I acknowledge it openly. But not all the wrong you suppose. I have sent every quarter a liberal share of money to you through Dench, which he retained for himself, and I—I have often had an ache of heart and yearning after you, but have been prevented from coming to see you by the reports of what you were and what you did—slanderous and wicked reports—sent me by that infamous man. I believed him.'
'Then you never knew me,' said Jane slowly, 'or you would not, you could not have believed him.'
'I never knew your worth, Jane,' said he, 'because I had not that worth in me which could appreciate how noble and how good you were. Can you forgive me?'
'I do not know,' she said slowly—dreamily. 'It is a long story. Nineteen years of desolation and heart-break; nineteen years is a long time, and in that chain each day is a link, and each link is full of pain.'
'Jane,' said Mr. Holwood, 'here is your ring, that you threw on the floor in the Assembly Rooms at Bath. Will you not take it again?'