“She has scarcely left her for a minute since she was carried in,” Miss Sibson answered warmly. And to her eyes, too, there rose something like a tear. “Only with difficulty have I made her take the most necessary rest. But if your ladyship pleases, I will ask whether she will see you.”
“Do so, if you please.”
Miss Sibson retired for this purpose, and Lady Lansdowne, left to herself, rose and looked from the window. As soon as it had been possible to move her, the dying woman had been carried into the nearest house which had escaped the flames, and Lady Lansdowne, gazing out, looked on the scene of conflict, saw lines of ruins, still asmoke in parts, and discerned between the scorched limbs of trees, from which the last foliage had fallen, the blackened skeletons of houses. A gaping crowd was moving round the Square, under the eyes of special constables, who, distinguished by white bands on their arms, guarded the various entrances. Hundreds, doubtless, who would fain have robbed were there to stare; but for the most part the guilty shunned the scene, and the gazers consisted mainly of sightseers from the country, or from Bath, or of knots of merchants and traders and the like who argued, some that this was what came of Reform, others that not Reform but the refusal of Reform was to blame for it.
Presently she saw Sir Robert’s stately figure threading its way through the crowd. He walked erect, but with effort; yet though her heart swelled with pity, it was not with pity for him. He would have his daughter and in a few days, in a few weeks, in a few months at most, the clouds would pass and leave him to enjoy the clear evening of his days.
But for her whom he had taken to his house twenty years before in the bloom of her beauty, the envied, petted, spoiled child of fortune, who had sinned so lightly and paid so dearly, and who now lay distraught at the close of all, what evening remained? What gleam of light? What comfort at the last?
In her behalf, the heart which Whig pride, and family prejudice, and the cares of riches had failed to harden, swelled to bursting. “He must forgive her!” she ejaculated. “He shall forgive her!” And gliding to the door she stayed Mary, who was in the act of entering.
“I must see your father,” she said. “He is mounting the stairs now. Go to your mother, my dear, and when I ring, do you come!”
What Mary read in her face, of feminine pity and generous purpose, need not be told. Whatever it was, the girl seized the woman’s hand, kissed it with wet eyes, and fled. And when Sir Robert, ushered upstairs by Miss Sibson, entered the room and looked round for his daughter, he found in her stead the wife of his enemy.
On the instant he remembered the errand on which she had sought him six months before, and he was quick to construe her presence by its light, and to feel resentment. The wrong of years, the daily, hourly wrong, committed not against him only but against the innocent and the helpless, this woman would have him forgive at a word; merely because the doer, who had had no ruth, no pity, no scruples, hung on the verge of that step which all, just and unjust, must take! And some, he knew, standing where he stood, would forgive; would forgive with their lips, using words which meant nought to the sayer, though they soothed the hearers. But he was no hypocrite; he would not forgive. Forgive? Great Heaven, that any should think that the wrongs of a lifetime could be forgiven in an hour! At a word! Beside a bed! As soon might the grinding wear of years be erased from the heart, the wrinkles of care from the brow, the snows of age from the head! As easily might a word give back to the old the spring and flame and vigour of their youth!
Something of what he thought impressed itself on his face. Lady Lansdowne marked the sullen drop of his eyebrows, and the firm set of the lower face; but she did not flinch. “I came upon your name,” she said, “in the report of the dreadful doings here—in the ‘Mercury,’ this morning. I hope, Sir Robert, I shall be pardoned for intruding.”