“Our daughter,” he repeated. “Our daughter!”
“Mary?” she murmured. “Mary?”
“Yes, Mary.”
She smiled faintly on him. Mary’s head was touching his, but she did not answer. She remained looking at them. They could not tell whether she understood, or was slipping away again. He took her hand and pressed it gently. “Do you hear me?” he said. “If I was harsh to you in the old days, if I made mistakes, if I wronged you, I want you—wife, say that you forgive me.”
“I—forgive you,” she murmured. A faint gleam of mischief, of laughter, of the old Lady Sybil, shone for an instant in her eyes, as if she knew that she had the upper hand. “I forgive you—everything,” she murmured. Yes, for certain now, she was slipping away.
Mary took her other hand. But she did not speak again. And before the watch on the table beside her had ticked many times she had slipped away for good, with that gleam of triumph in her eyes—forgiving.
XXXVII
IN THE MOURNING COACH
It is a platitude that the flood is followed by the ebb. In the heat of action, and while its warmth cheered his spirits, Arthur Vaughan felt that he had done something. True, what he had done brought him no nearer to making his political dream a reality. Not for him the promise,
It shall be thine in danger’s hour
To guide the helm of Britain’s power
And midst thy country’s laurelled crown
To twine a garland all thy own.
Yet he had done something. He had played the man when some others had not played the man.