“Hush!” the dying woman answered, a look of terror crossing her face. “Hush, child! Don’t speak! I’m ready, gentlemen; I will go with you. I am not afraid. My neck is small, and it will be but a squeeze.” And she tried to raise herself in the bed. Mary laid gentle hands on her, and restrained her. “Mother,” she said. “Mother! Don’t you know me? I am Mary.” But Lady Sybil, heedless of her, looked beyond her, with fear and suspicion in her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I know you. I know you. I know you. But who is—that? Who is that?” “My father. It is my father. Don’t you know him?” But still, “Who is it? Who is it?” Lady Sybil continued to ask. “Who is it?” Mary burst into tears. “What does he want? What does he want? What does he want?” the dying woman asked in endless, unreasoning repetition. Sir Robert had entered the room in the full belief that with the best of wills it would be hard, it would be well-nigh impossible to forgive; to forgive his wife with more than the lips. But when he heard her, weak and helpless as she was, thinking of another; when he understood that she who had done so great a wrong to the child was willing to give up her own life for the child; when he felt the sudden drag at his heart-strings of many an old and sacred recollection, shared only by her, and which that voice, that face, that form brought back, he fell on his knees by the bed. She shrank from him, terrified. “What does he want?” she repeated. “Sybil,” he said, in a husky voice, “I want your forgiveness, Sybil, wife! Do you hear me? Will you forgive me? Can you forgive me, late as it is?” Strange to say, his voice pierced the confusion which filled the sick brain. She looked at him steadily and long; and she sighed, but she did not answer. “Sybil,” he repeated in a quavering voice. “Do you not know me? Don’t you remember me? I am your husband.” “Yes, I know,” she muttered. “This is your daughter.” She smiled. “Our daughter,” he repeated. “Our daughter!” “Mary?” she murmured. “Mary?” “Yes, Mary.” She smiled faintly on him. Mary’s head was touching his, but she did not answer. She remained looking at them. They could not tell whether she understood, or was slipping away again. He took her hand and pressed it gently. “Do you hear me?” he said. “If I was harsh to you in the old days, if I made mistakes, if I wronged you, I want you—wife, say that you forgive me.” “I—forgive you,” she murmured. A faint gleam of mischief, of laughter, of the old Lady Sybil, shone for an instant in her eyes, as if she knew that she had the upper hand. “I forgive you—everything,” she murmured. Yes, for certain now, she was slipping away. Mary took her other hand. But she did not speak again. And before the watch on the table beside her had ticked many times she had slipped away for good, with that gleam of triumph in her eyes—forgiving. XXXVII IN THE MOURNING COACH