Page:Once a Week NS Volume 7.djvu/17

 it I could only gather what comfort there was in prayer, and in my child—our child, my Philip!”

Winnifred listened even more eagerly than before, and pressed the thin hand more closely. The Earl gazed at the dying woman even more intensely; and the doctor, raising her form gently, gave her some more refreshment.

After a short pause, the patient, with a sadder tone, and the tears gently dropping one by one from her closed eyes, continued—

“The trial had not changed me, my dear sweet love, nor had it broken me. I determined to still endure. I took the punishments as some good priests tell us to take them, as a recompense for the greater pleasures we had known, as a trial and a test, a warning that we should not forget God. Heaven help me!—life is at best a trial, when we hardly dare be happy except in the dreamlike illusions of our youth. I trusted your love, Philip, even though you were married to your English wife. I never flinched, nor failed, nor doubted. I was rewarded. But oh, the bitter sweet! You proved your love by urging me to be dishonest to your other child. With all the eloquence which a pent-up, unsatisfied love could give you, you tried to persuade me to do wrong. I resisted for a long time, for a long, long time.”

“You did, Eugenie! God knows you did. You were better and wiser than I was. You set before me the folly of the wrong, but I could not be persuaded.”

“My dear!” murmured the poor sick lady, “God permits some of us to yield to sin, because we do not trust Him. I was about to yield, when I went to confession, and sought comfort in the words of the ! good father who directed my prayers. He ! knew not of you, for I did not tell him all.

He showed me a way out of the horrible pit, even if it was for the first and only time I in my life—”

“The first and only time!” The Earl breathed more quickly, and awaited with anxious ears, as if he divined what was coming.

“ Even, then, if I deceived you. You urged me to change the children. You sent to me your Normandy nurse with my little boy, rosy with country air and tanned with sea breezes. He was to be, like you, the great Earl of Chesterton. But then he would have been, like you, tempted, set up high, and bom to miserable alliances of family and of pride, never to know the truth. I looked for smaller paths and quieter ways for our child, my Philip. My heart revolted at the trial for my boy. I could not consent. Your nurse—a creature only won by 11 gold—received my bribe as well as yours. You thought that you had done that deed; but still my child was kept near me—as I well knew—and did not fill another place! ! Pardon me, Philip!”

“Thank God!—thank God!” gasped the nobleman, as if a weight had fallen from l him; while Winnifred, covering the thin frail hand with grateful kisses, placed it to her own pure heart, saying—

“He is Lord Wimpole still!”

“ He should have been a light Shining to bless us! But proved a storm and blight Sent to distress us." Scott.

“ THIS is a strange case,” said the doctor. “I am obliged to listen to many a confession; but I do not remember anything like this.”

“I am so thankful you are here, Dr.Richards,” whispered Winnifred, speaking, thus for her husband’s sake. “You will remember what the poor lady has said?”

The doctor replied by an upward, a surprised but brilliant glance, which plainly said, “Can any one forget it?” The nurse,too, looked up, as if to testify that she too was human, and not a mere ornament with I a religious exterior.

“Hush!” ejaculated the doctor at length,after a somewhat anxious pause, “she will speak again.” Then he thought to himself, “The newly recovered strength will last some time—it is useless to check her. What I dread is, the collapse after this; but if she will aid us—as of course she will, withhope before her— I think we shall pull through. Sickness of what we call heart I and mind, conscience and feeling!—those are the matters that puzzle the doctor. Who knows in what organ, either, numbing, deadening pain is situated?”

The same strange, trembling, nervous motion passed over Mrs. Wade’s form and features as she again spoke, after drinking eagerly and with interest—not mere sufferance—some wine, as if she knew that it did her good, and gave her momentary strength.