第208章

"I could not die without your forgiveness," she murmured, her eyes falling before him as she thought of her past. "Do you turn from me?

Bear with me a little minute! Only say you forgive me, and I shall die in peace!"

"Isabel?" he spoke, not knowing in the least what he said. "Are you--are you--were you Madame Vine?"

"Oh, forgive--forgive me! I did not die. I got well from the accident, but it changed me dreadfully. Nobody knew me, and I came here as Madame Vine. I could not stay away, Archibald, forgive me!"

His mind was in a whirl, his ideas had gone wool-gathering. The first clear thought that came thumping through his brain was, that he must be a man of two wives. She noticed his perplexed silence.

"I could not stay away from you and my children. The longing for you was killing me," she reiterated, wildly, like one talking in a fever.

"I never knew a moment's peace after the mad act I was guilty of, in quitting you. Not an hour had I departed when my repentance set in; and even then I would have retraced and come back, but I did not know how. See what it has done for me!" tossing up her gray hair, holding out her attenuated wrists. "Oh, forgive--forgive me! My sin was great, but my punishment was greater. It has been as one long scene of mortal agony."

"Why did you go?" asked Mr. Carlyle.

"Did you not know?"

"No. It has always been a mystery to me."

"I went out of love for you."

A shade of disdain crossed his lips. She was equivocating to him on her death-bed.

"Do not look in that way," she panted. "My strength is nearly gone--you must perceive that it is--and I do not, perhaps, express myself clearly. I loved you dearly, and I grew suspicious of you. I thought you were false and deceitful to me; that your love was all given to another; and in my sore jealousy, I listened to the temptings of that bad man, who whispered to me of revenge. It was not so, was it?"

Mr. Carlyle had regained his calmness, outwardly, at any rate. He stood by the side of the bed, looking down upon her, his arms crossed upon his chest, and his noble form raised to its full height.

"Was it so?" she feverishly repeated.

"Can you ask it, knowing me as you did then, as you must have known me since? I never was false to you in thought, in word, or in deed."

"Oh, Archibald, I was mad--I was mad! I could not have done it in anything but madness. Surely you will forget and forgive!"

"I cannot forget. I have already forgiven!"

"Try and forget the dreadful time that has passed since that night!" she continued, the tears falling on her cheeks, as she held up to him one of her poor hot hands. "Let your thoughts go back to the days when you first knew me; when I was here, Isabel Vane, a happy girl with my father. At times I have lost myself in a moment's happiness in thinking of it. Do you remember how you grew to love me, though you thought you might not tell it to me--and how gentle you were with me, when papa died--and the hundred pound note? Do you remember coming to Castle Marling?--and my promise to be your wife--and the first kiss you left upon my lips? And, oh, Archibald! Do you remember the loving days after I was your wife--how happy we were with each other? Do you remember when Lucy was born, we thought I should have died; and your joy, your thankfulness that God restored me? Do you remember all this?

Aye. He did remember it. He took the poor hand into his, and unconsciously played with its wasted fingers.

"Have you any reproach to cast to me?" he gently said, bending his head a little.

"Reproach to you! To you, who must be almost without reproach in the sight of Heaven! You, who were everlasting to me--ever anxious for my welfare! When I think of what you were, and are, and how I quitted you, I could sink into the earth with remorse and shame. My own sin, I have surely expiated; I cannot expiate the shame I entailed upon you, and upon our children."

Never. He felt it as keenly now as he had felt it then.

"Think what it has been for me!" she resumed, and he was obliged to bend his ear to catch her gradually weakening tones. "To live in this house with your wife--to see your love for her--to watch the envied caresses that once were mine! I never loved you so passionately as I have done since I lost you. Think what it was to watch William's decaying strength; to be alone with him in his dying hour, and not to be able to say he is my child as well as yours! When he lay dead, and the news went forth to the household, it was /her/ petty grief you soothed, not mine, his mother's. God alone knows how I have lived through it all; it as been to me as the bitterness of death."

"Why did you come back?" was the response of Mr. Carlyle.

"I have told you. I could not live, wanting you and my children."

"It was wrong; wrong in all ways."

"Wickedly wrong. You cannot think worse of it than I have done. But the consequences and the punishment would be mine alone, as long as I guarded against discovery. I never thought to stop here to die; but death seems to have come on me with a leap, like it came to my mother."

A pause of labored hard breathing. Mr. Carlyle did not interrupt it.