“Stanton! Which of you is Stanton?” she cried.
“It’s me!”
“Then go as fast as you can and fetch your master! His wife is calling for him; run quickly, or it will be too late. She is dying!”
“I am his master! I am her husband! Take me with you!” said Clide, turning so white that Stanton thought he was going to
faint and made a movement to give him his arm; but Clide waved him away and walked on with a steady step.
Something between a cry and an oath escaped from Percival; he made no attempt to follow them, but muttered more to himself than to his companions:
“The murder is out! There is nothing more to tell. She is his wife, and I am the Prendergast he knew.”
Stanton’s fury had subsided in an instant, quenched by the chill which those words of the attendant had thrown upon the group: “She is dying!” What had human passion or earthly vengeance to do now with Isabel or Mr. Prendergast? In the presence of the Great Avenger all other vengeance was silenced. The three men walked on toward the house without exchanging a word. The porter let them in. The doctor, he said, had not yet returned. It did not matter; they would wait, not for him now, but for Death.
When Clide entered the room, he beheld Admiral de Winton seated beside the dying woman’s bed; her face was lifted toward his with a mute expression, half of yearning, half of fear, while she listened to the soothing words he tried to speak to her. The moment Clide appeared her eyes turned toward him. There was no mistaking the identity now; those eyes, so faded and dim, were the same that had first fired his foolish heart with their dark young radiance. The cheeks, once round, were wan and hollow, the glossy, ebon hair was specked with gray, but the face was that of his long-lost wife, the Isabel of his boyish love.
“You have come!… You have come to say that you forgive