“You must have pity, my son,” whispered Matthew.
The tone wrung the young man's heart like a material grip. It was the first sign of returning power of sensation. He cleared his throat and said constrainedly,—
“Don't talk like that, father. I am your son and must always honour you.”
Matthew again turned his head and watched the grey sky. He knew his son to be a stern man, and the austere sound of his words chilled him more than the death he felt approaching.
“What can I do?” he murmured, dispirited. “It was a long, long penance. Don't turn from me, my son.”
“But—father,” said Sylvester, brokenly, “everything seems to have left me.”
The numbness had gone, and the whole sensitive man writhed in sudden pain, with loss of faith. His mother, whom he had deemed holy as a saint, his wife whom he had worshipped as a star,—both to have been false wives, women of shame! The old torture revived, intensified tenfold. The sight of the once revered being who lay dying in utter sadness before his eyes, and for whom the old love was now fighting within him for mastery, raised the torture's poignancy to such a pitch that at last it broke through the reserve of a lifetime and found vent in a great cry,—
“My own wife was unfaithful to me. How, can I judge my mother?”
A flush of life entered the dying man's cheeks. He turned quickly; his eyes were luminous.
“Constance? I did not think you knew—till the other night. And then I hoped against hope.”