"She is very weak and feeble. Perhaps now you have appeared again, come back almost from the very jaws of death, she may recover. Let us pray she will!" Then she left him alone, saying she would soon return. Agonizing as had been the long hours, weeks, months that he had spent alone in the chapel-room of the Bastille, and nearly as much alone in the _calotte_ with De Chevagny, when, both heartbroken, they had sometimes scarcely exchanged a word for days, none had seemed more bitter, more unendurable, than the few minutes during which Lady Ogilvie was absent. For everything that he had gathered as to the state of Kate's health, since he had emerged into the world once more, pointed only too plainly to the fact that he had but found her again to again lose her, and to lose her this time beyond all hopes of recovery. "Come," said Lady Ogilvie, returning to him--"come; she is now expecting you. I have prepared her. Come." He followed her up the great stairs to the second floor, and there his companion opened the door and ushered him into a large, well-warmed and lighted room, and then left them. Seated before the great fire, yet with her face turned eagerly towards the door as though watching for him, he saw her once again--saw the woman he had loved so long, the woman whom Fate had parted him from. She was thin, now, almost to attenuation--she, whose supple, graceful figure had once been one of her greatest charms--so thin that she looked more like a child that was unwell than a grown woman, and on her face there were no roses now. "Kate," he exclaimed, advancing swiftly to her as she held out her thin worn arms to him, and falling on his knee beside her--"Kate, my darling, I have come back at last; am free once more! Kate, nothing can part us now." For answer she let her head droop to his shoulder and lie there. It seemed to her that at last perfect peace had come, that all the black and dreadful past was gone and done with for ever; then she whispered: "Nothing part us! Oh, my dear, my love, there is one parting more only to be made; then--then--we shall meet to never part again. Bertie, you have come in time, yet too late--too late for this world." "No, no," he said, "it shall not be! Kate, do not leave me now. Think, think, my darling, of how long we have waited, of all that has separated us so long, and that now there is no longer any barrier between us. Think of the dreary months in prison, months that I counted day by day, hoping, praying ever to get free and come back to you; think how brave you have been, always waiting for me. O Kate, my sweet, do not go and leave me now alone!" and as he spoke he wept, and buried his head upon her lap.