"It is to see my son Richard for the last time--him, you know, that was said to have gone wrong years ago." "Surely that is a wish which ought to be very easily gratified," said Hermia. "I am, of course, assuming that you know where he may be found." "Where he himself is I cannot say, but when I saw him last he gave me a certain address in London where he said a letter would always find him." "Then let me write to him in your name," said Hermia, eagerly. "He cannot be aware how ill you are, or he would have been to see you before now." But it was not till the following day that the widow could be induced to let Hermia write, and not then till she had given her promise not to reveal to any one Richard Varrel's address. It was just a week before the end came that Hermia wrote, but day passed after day without bringing a response of any kind. The dying woman listened with an eagerness painful to witness, for her son's footfall on the stairs, but listened in vain. "Who knows but that he's in trouble again and can't come," she moaned wearily to herself more than once. During those last few days Hermia was a great deal with her. The person in whose house Mrs. Varrel lodged happened also to be ill at the time, and could not wait upon her as she had been in the habit of doing. As the dying woman's weakness increased she began to wander in her mind, but in all her wanderings her son seemed somehow to be mixed up. As far as Hermia could make out, he appeared to be always in some dire trouble from which his mother was vainly trying to extricate him; but there was nothing coherent about her utterances--they were merely a jumble of disconnected sentences, the gaps between which her listener lacked the knowledge needful to enable her to fill up. But, indeed, Hermia took very little heed of anything that fell from the widow's lips at such times, but waited patiently till the light of reason came back to her poor bewildered brain, for such wanderings were only occasional; the greater part of the time she was as mentally clear as ever she had been. One day, however--it was the third day before she died--while one of her wandering fits was on her, she gave utterance to a remark which startled Hermia not a little. "There's blood on the notes!" she exclaimed. "Why should you want me to have charge of them? Take them back! I won't touch them!" Then her voice died away in an inarticulate murmur. After that it was impossible for Hermia to do otherwise than listen. About an hour later, after a long silence, the dying woman cried out in a voice which sent a shiver through the girl, "No, no, I won't believe it! What! My boy--my Richard! Anyone but him--anyone but him!" Then later still, as before, "There's blood on the notes! I won't touch them!"