“Percy! Don’t you see? Your father is suffering.”
It was Margery who had thus interfered. The dying man would have checked her, but his voice failed him, and he sank back on the pillow with a moan of pain. Sank back and lifted not his head again; neither did he speak any more. Half an hour later the son was kneeling by the bedside in devout prayer, while the bereaved wife, now widowed, wept in the first great sorrow of her life.
The second scene is at the castle, where there is a bed on which lies one dying.
It is now November. In the early springtime Sir William Chester had come to Allerdale Castle in failing health, bringing with him his only child, Cordelia, a girl of twelve years and little more.
She was all that was left to him of his own blood to care for and to love. His wife had died several years before in India, where he was employed by the government.
His parents had both died during his youth, and brother or sister he never had. Neither had he an uncle or an own cousin. An aunt by marriage he possibly may have had, but were she living she could be nothing to him.
Thomas Brandon, Earl of Allerdale, had reached the age of sixty-four, a hale hearty old man, seemingly as strong and vigorous as ever.
He was a handsome man, tall and strong, with a full, broad chest; his limbs shapely and muscular, with a step as firm and light as that of youth.
He had a grand head, covered with snow-white hair, and a strongly marked face that retained much—very much—of its old-time beauty, for Tom Brandon, when he had been simple Lord Oakleigh, had been accounted one of the handsomest men of his time.
The earl was but little better off in the way of kindred than was his guest. He had a son and a grandson, and that completed the list.