'I do not know.' She looked at her hand. 'My fingers are so swelled.'
'Jane,' he went on—and Winefred, holding her mother, looked earnestly into her face, so changed from what it had been.
'Jane,' pursued Mr. Holwood, 'I have come here as a suppliant. I am smitten with an incurable disease—perhaps the most terrible and painful that can afflict man. How rapidly it will act I cannot say—but in a year at the outside all will be over. In a little while I shall not be able to speak, for it will begin from my tongue—the tongue you cursed. Jane, Jane! May I not die in your arms?'
Then a shudder ran through the woman; she shook herself free from Winefred, stretched her purple hands towards him, and in thrilling tones said: 'O Jos! my own Jos! Come to my heart once more.'
Thereat Mrs. Jose took Winefred by the arm and drew her into the back kitchen; thither Jack had already withdrawn, and then the good woman wiped her eyes and kissed Winefred—thrust her towards Jack, and said: 'You, boy—kiss her too.'
Next moment Jane called them.
'I want you here,' she said. Once more her voice had acquired some of its firmness and imperiousness. And they saw her—she was herself again, nay other—younger, with a tender look in her face and love in her eyes.
'I want you here,' she said. 'I desire you to hear me ask for pardon of Jack Rattenbury. I have done you a great wrong, Jack, for which I can make no amends. Can you forgive me?'
'No, no,' answered the young man. 'You have done me no wrong. Whatever it was that my father saved could not have been better expended than in the purchase of this house, and in the education of Winefred. Give her to me as the balance.'