The Earl shook his head; and a smile, faint indeed, but still the first that had crossed his countenance for a long time, hung upon his lip during a single instant. "You are a lover," he said; "but nothing can soothe or comfort me more in life, Henry. Yet I would fain see Sir Walter Herbert. I am in the course of atonement, and I must atone to him, too, in words as well as deeds." "Indeed, my lord," said the surgeon, "the fewer that you see--" "Sir, I will have it so!" exclaimed the Earl, turning upon him with a frowning brow. "Let me not be tormented by opposition even at my last hour!" And with a firm and imperious voice he directed Bertha to invite Sir Walter and his daughter to his chamber. They came speedily, and no trace of any feeling but that of kind and generous compassion was to be seen upon the countenance of Sir Walter Herbert, when he entered the presence of the man who had inflicted so much pain and anxiety upon him. The Earl gazed for a moment in his face, as if to see what expression it bore, in order to form his own demeanour by it; and then held out his hand to him frankly. "Sir Walter," he said, as the old knight advanced and took it, "I have done you wrong; I have acted ungenerously towards you, as well as towards many others. Do you forgive me?" "From my heart," replied Sir Walter Herbert; "but let us not think of anything that is painful, my good lord. I trust that you have not been seriously injured in the course of this sad business, the details of which I know but imperfectly." The Earl shook his head at the expression of such a hope, but he made no reply; and merely demanded, turning to Bertha, "Where is the paper?" When it was put into his hand, he continued, "I intended this to have reached you early in the morning, Sir Walter. Take it now. It is but an act of justice; and anything that might be considered wanting by your lawyer to put it into due form, had better be mentioned to me soon; for I am going a long journey, Sir Walter, and would fain leave nothing incomplete that I can set to rights. Mistress Alice," he continued, turning to the fair creature who stood timidly a step behind, in a scene so painful and so unusual--"Mistress Alice, sweet lady, come hither, and speak to an old man ere he dies." Alice approached quickly to his bedside, and taking her hand, he gazed up in her face, saying, "Lady, to you I have acted doubly ill, for in my demeanour towards you lately I not only forgot what was just and right, but what was courteous also; and yet I am going to ask a great and extraordinary favour of you. When you are the wife of this my son--which God grant you may be, and soon--try, if it be possible, by kindness and affection during the whole of the rest of his life, to make up to him for the want of a father's love, and a father's care, during the adverse period of his youth."