"I came," he saith, "but to hear thy voice once afore I die. Look upon thy face can I never more. But I thought to hear the voice of the only woman which ever loved me in very truth, and unto whom my wrong-doing is the heaviest sin in all my black calendar." "Pardoned sin should not be heavy," saith she. "Nay," quoth Mr _Norris_, "but it is the heaviest of all." "Come in, _Leonard_," saith Aunt _Joyce_, tenderly. "Nay, my merciful _Joyce_, let me not trouble thee," saith he, "for if thou canst not see it in my face, I know in mine heart that I am struck for death." "I have seen it," she made answer. "And thou shalt spend thy last days no whither but in the Manor House at _Minster Lovel_, nor with any other nurse nor sister than _Joyce Morrell_. _Leonard_, for forty years I have prayed for this day. Dash not the cup from my lips ere I have well tasted its sweetness." I caught a low murmur from Mr _Norris'_ lips, "Passing the love of women!" Then he held out his hand, and Aunt _Joyce_ drew it upon her arm and led him into her privy parlour. I left them alone till she called me. To that interview there should be no third save God. Nor was it much that I heard at after. Some dread accident had happed him, at after which his sight had departed, and his hair had gone white in a few weeks. He had counted himself so changed that none should know him. I doubt if he should not have been hid safe enough from any eyes save hers. He lived about three months thereafter. Never in all my life saw I man that spake of his past life with more loathing and contrition. Even in death, raptures of thanksgiving had he none. He could not, as it seemed, rise above an humble trust that God would be as good as His word, and that for _Christ's_ sake he that had confessed his sins and forsaken them should find mercy. He alway said that it was one word of Aunt _Joyce_ that had given him even so much hope. She had said to him, that day in the copse, after she had sent away _Milisent_ and me,--"I shall never give thee up, _Leonard_. I shall never cease praying for thee, till I know thou art beyond all prayer." "It was those prayers, _Joyce_, that brought me back," he said. "After mine accident, I had been borne into a cot by the way-side, where as I lay abed in the back chamber, I could not but hear the goodman every day read the _Scriptures_ to his household. Those _Scriptures_ seethed in mine heart, and thy prayers were alway with me. It was as though they fitted one into the other. I thought thou hadst prayed me into that cot, for I might have been carried into some godless house where no such thing should have chanced me. But ever and anon, mixed with God's Word, I heard thy words, and thy voice seemed as if it called to me,--`Come back! come back!' I thought, if there were so much love and mercy in thee, there must be some left in God."