"He lives; but his hours draw to a close. Had you not come now you would not have found him alive." "Let me see him at once." "Come. His mother is with him." He followed the _Curé_ into a room sparsely furnished, and of unpolished pine-wood; a room on which there was no carpet and but little furniture; and there he saw the dying form of Philip Smerdon. Kneeling by the bedside, and praying while she sobbed bitterly, was a lady whom Lord Penlyn knew to be Smerdon's mother. She rose at his entrance, and brushed the tears from her eyes. "You have come in time to see him die," she said, while her frame was convulsed with sobs. "He has been expecting you. He said he could not pass away until he had seen you." Penlyn said some words of consolation to her, and then he asked: "Is he conscious?" The poor mother leant over the bed and spoke to him, and he opened his eyes. "Your friend has come, Philip," she said. A light came into his eyes as he saw Penlyn standing before him, and then in a hollow voice he asked her to leave them alone. "I have something to say to him," he said; "and the time is short." "Yes," he said when she was gone, and speaking faintly in answer to Penlyn, who said he had come as quickly as possible; "yes, I know it. I expected you. And now that you are here can you bring yourself to say that you forgive me?" For one moment the other hesitated, then he said: "I forgive you. May God do so likewise." "Ah! that is it--it is that that makes death terrible! But listen! I must speak at once, I have but a short time more. This is my last hour, I feel it, I know it." "Do not distress yourself with speaking. Do not think of it now." "Not think of it! When have I ever forgotten it! Come closer, listen. I thought he had come between you and Miss Raughton for ever. I never dreamed of the magnanimity he showed in that letter. Then I determined to kill him--I thought I could do it without it being known. I did not go to the 'Chase' on that morning, but, instead, tracked him from one place to another, disguised in a suit of workman's clothes that I had bought some time ago for a fancy dress ball. I thought he would never leave his club that night; but at last he came out, and then--then--God! I grow weaker!--I did it." Penlyn buried his head in his hands as he listened to this recital, and once he made a sign as though begging Smerdon to stop, but he did not heed him.