'My girl,' she said, 'if Kate had been like thee! Hark! I hated, an' yet I always loved thee! Thou'dst ne'er ha' treated me like a dog. An', ah me! I loved her like my soul!'
'Grandmother,' answered Deborah sweetly and with a clear utterance, that pierced to the dying ears, 'my mother loved you. Only the other day I heard that great as she was, she never forgot you, even in her dreams. Day and night she thought of you; but her promise to her husband kept her from you, though she pined to see you once again. Oh, be merciful then! Forgive her! You are going now to meet again. O forgive her! that God may let ye meet in heaven!'
The great eyes stirred not from Deborah's face. 'Shall I win to heaven, lass? Speak to me o' heaven.' And Deborah described to her that beautiful place, that land glorious with promise and with bliss, that 'eye hath not seen, nor heart of man conceived.' The dying gipsy listened with her soul in her eyes. Then said she, very faintly: 'I am goin'. O Jesus, let me come! O Kate—my Kate!' Then, with wonderful sudden life and fire: 'Hi! you, my lass! Where's the boy? the rogue—"wild Charlie" they called him. Where's he?'
'In Ireland. Gone to fight for the Irish, grandmother.'
She laughed exultantly. 'Why, I tell thee why—his mother was Irish, an' he knew it. Mad boy, mad boy!'
Deborah laid her white hand on the old brown trembling hand, and smiled. She watched to see again and again a strange look of Charlie in that faded face and those large and wistful eyes. A great new-born love was flooding Deborah's heart for the dying vagrant. But death was taking the wanderer away. 'O Jesus, let me come!' Deborah heard her say again.
The fire died out; the flame sank low; the embers of life just smouldered, nothing more.... The fresh wind blew in vain on the wild gipsy face. She was gone.
Scarcely had Katharine Shaw been laid in her grave when Sir Vincent Fleming became very ill—so ill, that Deborah despatched a letter post-haste to Mistress Margaret Fleming, begging her to make known the fact to Charlie at once. But Mistress Fleming had started for Dublin; and this is how it befell. One morning a letter came to her. She often received such; but this one had cost her a laugh and a cry of joy. Just as she was in the perusal, old Jordan entered, and stared in wonderment at the glorious happiness of her face. 'Why, my maid,' he said, 'what hast got there? It's naught but paper, is it?'
'No, dad; but something writ upon it. Father,' she said, and rose and slid the beautiful arm around his neck, 'haven't I been a good daughter to thee? Proud and pursed up with mine own conceit, the lads o' the village have always called me. But, father, "Mistress Dinnage" has been a good daughter unto thee?'
'Ay, ay, lass, thou hast! What wouldst be comin' at? What ails thee now, Mistress?'