Severe internal haemorrhage continued for some time and then stopped. They say she is sure to get over it; but she herself says no. She has suffered from it before.' Cytherea was ready in a few moments, and entered the carriage.
3. SEVEN O'CLOCK P.M.
Soft as was Cytherea's motion along the corridors of Knapwater House, the preternaturally keen intelligence of the suffering woman caught the maiden's well-known footfall. She entered the sick-chamber with suspended breath.
In the room everything was so still, and sensation was as it were so rarefied by solicitude, that thinking seemed acting, and the lady's weak act of trying to live a silent wrestling with all the powers of the universe. Nobody was present but Mr. Raunham, the nurse having left the room on Cytherea's entry, and the physician and surgeon being engaged in a whispered conversation in a side-chamber. Their patient had been pronounced out of danger.
Cytherea went to the bedside, and was instantly recognized. O, what a change--Miss Aldclyffe dependent upon pillows! And yet not a forbidding change. With weakness had come softness of aspect: the haughtiness was extracted from the frail thin countenance, and a sweeter mild placidity had taken its place.
Miss Aldclyffe signified to Mr. Raunham that she would like to be alone with Cytherea.
'Cytherea?' she faintly whispered the instant the door was closed.
Cytherea clasped the lady's weak hand, and sank beside her.
Miss Aldclyffe whispered again. 'They say I am certain to live; but I know that I am certainly going to die.' 'They know, I think, and hope.' 'I know best, but we'll leave that. Cytherea--O Cytherea, can you forgive me!' Her companion pressed her hand.
'But you don't know yet--you don't know yet,' the invalid murmured.
'It is forgiveness for that misrepresentation to Edward Springrove that I implore, and for putting such force upon him--that which caused all the train of your innumerable ills!' 'I know all--all. And I do forgive you. Not in a hasty impulse that is revoked when coolness comes, but deliberately and sincerely: as I myself hope to be forgiven, I accord you my forgiveness now.' Tears streamed from Miss Aldclyffe's eyes, and mingled with those of her young companion, who could not restrain hers for sympathy.
Expressions of strong attachment, interrupted by emotion, burst again and again from the broken-spirited woman.
'But you don't know my motive. O, if you only knew it, how you would pity me then!' Cytherea did not break the pause which ensued, and the elder woman appeared now to nerve herself by a superhuman effort. She spoke on in a voice weak as a summer breeze, and full of intermission, and yet there pervaded it a steadiness of intention that seemed to demand firm tones to bear it out worthily.