Mary burst into tears.
“What does he want? What does he want? What does he want?” the dying woman asked in endless, unreasoning repetition.
Sir Robert had entered the room in the full belief that with the best of wills it would be hard, it would be well-nigh impossible to forgive; to forgive his wife with more than the lips. But when he heard her, weak and helpless as she was, thinking of another; when he understood that she who had done so great a wrong to the child was willing to give up her own life for the child; when he felt the sudden drag at his heart-strings of many an old and sacred recollection, shared only by her, and which that voice, that face, that form brought back, he fell on his knees by the bed.
She shrank from him, terrified. “What does he want?” she repeated.
“Sybil,” he said, in a husky voice, “I want your forgiveness, Sybil, wife! Do you hear me? Will you forgive me? Can you forgive me, late as it is?”
Strange to say, his voice pierced the confusion which filled the sick brain. She looked at him steadily and long; and she sighed, but she did not answer.
“Sybil,” he repeated in a quavering voice. “Do you not know me? Don’t you remember me? I am your husband.”
“Yes, I know,” she muttered.
“This is your daughter.”
She smiled.