“Percy! Oh, I will always call you so! Can you doubt the truth of this?” So asked the old earl, holding the handsome youth by the shoulders and gazing eagerly, through bright tear-drops, into his face.
“My lord,” Percy answered, trembling at every joint, “how can I doubt it? I do certainly believe it true.”
“Doubt!—Believe!” cried Margery, springing to her feet with arm outstretched. “Look at that face—the face on those pillows! Oh, Heaven, have mercy! Is it not my own face made masculine, and hardened and brutalized? Your face, boy, is the face of your father. Had it been your mother’s, I do not think I should have endured you. Forgive me! I will say no more.”
At this point the pirate chief, who had been thus far held in check by the surgeon, started to a sitting posture, with fury in his face and a literal flame in his sunken eyes. He raised his maimed right hand toward Margery, and his lips moved. He gasped, and flecks of foam started out, but he did not speak. Another effort resulted in a low gurgling howl, and he sank back on his pillows—dead.
Margery stood for a time at the sofa side and gazed down upon the swart, dead face. By and by she turned toward the earl.
“Lord Allerdale,” she said, with a steady, earnest look into his watchful eyes, “I will tell you how you can prove to me your undoubting faith in the story I have told you. Give to the men whom I shall send, this body, and allow me to bury it by the side of the grave wherein I laid the mortal remains of his father. Will you do it?”
The earl looked at the stark form on the sofa and shuddered. The sight was a horror to him. Then he turned and looked upon the other—the truly noble, handsome, gallant lad, who had already, against heavy odds, found the way to his heart.
A single moment he gazed upon that face—Oh, so like the face of his dead son—and then he turned back to the woman.
“Yes! yes! Take it, for I know it is yours! And may the Father of us all, in His infinite mercy, give you peace and comfort for the remainder of your life! Heaven bless you, Margery, for the restitution you have this day made!”
“I am glad I have made it. I feel better—I feel less of unhappiness than I have felt for years. The gain is mine as well as yours. Percy could have been never any more to me, while to you he will be a new joy, a new life.”