His sight, that was beginning to fail him, sought her face with a wondering, baffled glance; through her whole life this loyalty to her pledged honour had bewildered him, even whilst by it he had found so merciless a power to bind and to drive one whom fear could never have swayed, nor force have moved. As she heard she lost remembrance of the deadly wrongs done against her by the man who should have been her foremost guard, her surest friend; all the long years through which he had persecuted and poisoned her freedom and her fame fell from her; lying, in his last hour, at her feet, having thus at last, however late, however slightly redeemed the cruelty of his past against her, he brought to her but one memory;—that of a long perished time, when on her childish ear his voice had come like music, breathing the poetry and the heroism of the world's dead youth.
"Be more just to us both!" she murmured, while the salt drops fell from her eyes upon his brow. "What I remembered always was what you at last remember too —the love you bore my mother, the love she gave to you. Let it bring peace at last between us."
He shuddered as she spoke.
"God! if priests' and women's tales be true,
