Her arm was under his pillow, and she drew it back to her gently until his head lay next her breast. "Hush--hush--hush!" she said, with choking sobs. But he went on steadily, as if he had not heard her. "Only tell him--not to--not to--lead little Alfy--into bad ways." After a pause, he said, "Do you hear!--tell him--" "He will not--he could not!" she broke out eagerly. "He is a good, good man, though people think he is not! He will take care of little Alfy, my darling--do not be afraid--he will never lead him into bad ways--never never!" Ought she to have said it? Had she given him--she, who, at this moment, would have laid down her life to save his, if that had been possible--the comfort she had meant to give, or a most cruel, cruel stab, in his last conscious hour? She looked at him with agonised, imploring face, which mutely prayed him to try and understand her; and there came slowly into his sunken eyes a vague intelligence and a dim, dim smile. He _did_ understand her--better, perhaps, than he had ever understood her before. "Good little woman!" he murmured, "Good little girl--to tell the truth." CHAPTER X. FULFILMENT. Rachel, who could not have dissembled if she had tried, appeared to be overwhelmed by Mr. Kingston's sudden death. She wept herself ill, sitting now in his library chair, now in his office, now in his dressing-room, with mementoes of his domestic occupations and the homely companionship of nearly half-a-dozen wedded years around her; missing him from his accustomed place with a sense of having lost one of the best and kindest husbands that ever ungrateful woman had. She allowed no one to touch his clothes and trinkets, or his books and pipes, or anything that he had used and cared for, but herself; and she cried over them, and kissed them, and laid them away in sacred drawers, to be treasured relics and heirlooms for her little Alfy, who was to be taught to reverence the memory of the tenderest of fathers, and to hand down to unborn generations the name and fame of the most accomplished and estimable of men. She wandered about her great, silent house, in and out of the spacious rooms, making loving inventories of all the rich appointments, which had never had so much grace and beauty as now. "He built this lovely place for _me_," she would say to herself, or perhaps say aloud to Beatrice, who was her chief companion at this time, "He had this carved dado made because _I_ didn't like tiles; he gave me this Florentine cabinet on my twentieth birthday; he chose these hangings himself because he said they suited my complexion." Every bit of the house and its furniture was newly sanctified by some of these reminiscences.