"Hear me, oh, God!" the white lips cried--"I, who have aided in wrecking a noble heart--hear me, and help me to keep my vow! I offer my whole life in atonement for the cruel and wicked past. If he dies, I shall go to my grave his unwedded widow. If he lives----" Her voice faltered and died out, her face drooped forward on the window-sill, and the flashing moonlight fell like a benediction on the bowed young head. CHAPTER XVI. AT SORRENTO. The low light in the western sky was dying out; the bay of Naples lay rosy in the haze of the dying day; and on this scene an invalid, looking from a window high up on the sea-washed cliff at Sorrento, gazed languidly. For he was surely an invalid who sat in that window chair and gazed at the wondrous Italian sea and that lovely Italian sky; surely an invalid, with that pallid face, those spectral, hollow eyes, those sunken cheeks, those bloodless lips; surely an invalid, and one but lately risen from the very gates of death--a pale shadow, worn and weak as a child. As he sits there, where he has sat for hours, lonely and alone, the door opens, and an English face looks in--the face of an Englishman of the lower classes. "A visitor for you, sir--just come, and a-foot; a lady, sir. She will not give her name, but wishes to see you most particular, if you please." "A lady! To see me?" The invalid opens his great, dark eyes in wonder as he speaks. "Yes, sir; an English lady, sir, dressed in black, and a wearing of a thick veil. She asked for Mr. Rupert Thetford as soon as she see me, as plain, as plain, sir----" The young man in the chair started, half rose, and then sank back--a wild, eager light lit in the hollow eyes. "Let her come in; I will see her!" The man disappeared; there was an instant's pause, then a tall, slender figure, draped and veiled in black, entered alone. The visitor stood still. Once more the invalid attempted to rise, once more his strength failed him. The lady threw back her veil with a sudden motion. "My God, Aileen!" "Rupert!" She was on her knees before him, lifting her suppliant hands. "Forgive me! Forgive me! I have seemed the most heartless and cruel of women! But I, too, have suffered. I am base and unworthy; but, oh! forgive me, if you can!" The old love, stronger than death, shone in her eyes, plead in her passionate, sobbing voice, and went to his very heart. "I have been so wretched, so wretched all these miserable years! Whilst my father lived I would not disobey his stern command that I was never to attempt to see or hear from you, and at his death I could not. You seemed lost to me and the world. Only by the merest accident I heard in Venice you were here, and ill--dying. I lost no time, I came hither at once, hoping against hope to find you alive. Thank God I did come! Oh, Rupert! Rupert! for the sake of the past forgive me!" "Forgive you!" and he tried to raise her. "Aileen--darling!"