Her voice died away for a moment, in faint, breathless murmurings. She struggled to recover it, and repeated in a whisper:
“Forgive me before I die! I have made a terrible atonement; I have borne witness against the innocence of my own child. My own child! I dare not bid God bless her, if they bring her to my bedside!—forgive me!—forgive me before I die!”
She took my hand, and pressed it to her cold lips. The tears gushed into my eyes, as I tried to speak to her.
“No tears for me !” she murmured gently. “Basil!—let me call you as your mother would call you if she was alive—Basil! pray that I may be forgiven in the dreadful Eternity to which I go, as you have forgiven me! And, for her ?—oh! who will pray for her when I am gone?”
Those words were the last I heard her pronounce. Exhausted beyond the power of speaking more, though it were only in a whisper, she tried to take my hand again, and express by a gesture the irrevocable farewell. But her strength failed her even for this—failed her with awful suddenness. Her hand moved halfway towards mine; then stopped, and trembled for a moment in the air; then fell to her side, with the fingers distorted and clenched together. She reeled where she stood, and sank helplessly as I stretched out my arms to support her.
Her husband rose fretfully from his chair, and took her from me. When his eyes met mine, the look of sullen self-restraint in his countenance was crossed, in an instant, by an expression of triumphant malignity. He whispered to me: “If you don’t change your tone by tomorrow!”—paused—and then, without finishing the sentence, moved away abruptly, and supported his wife to the door.
Just when her face was turned towards where I stood, as he took her out, I thought I saw the cold, vacant eyes soften as they rested on me, and