Page:The Private Life, Lord Beaupré, The Visits (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/239

Rh upon me I took advantage of it to kneel down by her bed and speak to her with the utmost tenderness.

"If you can't say it to your mother, can you say it perhaps to me?"

She gazed at me for some time. "What does it matter now if I'm dying?"

I shook my head and smiled. "You won't die if you get it off your mind."

"You'd be cruel to him," she said. "He's innocent—he's innocent."

"Do you mean you're guilty? What trifle are you magnifying?"

"Do you call it a trifle—" She faltered and paused.

"Certainly I do, my dear." Then I risked a great stroke. "I've often done it myself!"

"You? Never, never! I was cruel to him," she added.

This puzzled me, I couldn't work it into my conception. "How were you cruel?"

"In the garden. I changed suddenly, I drove him away, I told him he filled me with horror."