Winefred supporting her on one side, Jack on the other, the woman staggered to her feet, and at once recovered self-possession. She raised her head, looked at the wrists and swollen fingers and passed her hands over her eyes. 'It has been a dream, a nightmare,' she said. And then asked, 'Where is Olver Dench?' 'O mother, do not ask.' 'But I desire to know. He has robbed me.' 'He is gone to his account.' Jane was silent for a while. Presently she said, 'He carried off everything in a carpet-bag.' 'That,' said Winefred, 'will never be recovered. It has gone down along with him.' 'Gone down!' repeated Mrs. Marley, with trouble in her eyes. 'Yes, mother, ask no further. It shall be explained later. If Olver Dench has wronged you――and that he did so I know――God has judged him. Whatsoever of yours he had in that bag is lost, never to be recovered.' Jane turned her eyes slowly to Jack and said, 'It was your father's savings, hundreds of pounds of gold. I had kept it. I did wrong. I am punished.' 'Mother, are you better?' asked Winefred. 'Can you see who is before you?' 'Yes, you are here.' 'Not I alone. Here is father.' Jane looked at Mr. Holwood. Perhaps she was too shaken, too exhausted to manifest the resentment that had possessed her. She looked at him steadily, without hate, but also without affection in her eyes. 'Jane, my wife,' said he in a faltering voice, 'I also have done wrong, and like you I acknowledge it openly. But not all the wrong you suppose. I have sent every quarter a liberal share of money to you through Dench, which he retained for himself, and I――I have often had an ache of heart and yearning after you, but have been prevented from coming to see you by the reports of what you were and what you did――slanderous and wicked reports――sent me by that infamous man. I believed him.' 'Then you never knew me,' said Jane slowly, 'or you would not, you could not have believed him.' 'I never knew your worth, Jane,' said he, 'because I had not that worth in me which could appreciate how noble and how good you were. Can you forgive me?' 'I do not know,' she said slowly――dreamily. 'It is a long story. Nineteen years of desolation and heart-break; nineteen years is a long time, and in that chain each day is a link, and each link is full of pain.' 'Jane,' said Mr. Holwood, 'here is your ring, that you threw on the floor in the Assembly Rooms at Bath. Will you not take it again?' 'I do not know.' She looked at her hand. 'My fingers are so swelled.' 'Jane,' he went on――and Winefred, holding her mother, looked earnestly into her face, so changed from what it had been.