And here beside her, with the tyranny of the dying, this dear babbler wandered on in broken words, with painful breath, pleading, scolding, counselling.  She felt that he was exhausting himself.  She begged him to let her recall nurse and doctor.  He shook his head, and when he could no longer speak, he clung to her hand, his gaze solemnly, insistently, fixed upon her.

Her spirit writhed and rebelled.  But she was helpless in the presence of this mortal weakness, this affection, half earthly, half beautiful, on its knees before her.

A thought struck her.  Why not content him?  Whatever pledges she gave would die with him.  What did it matter?  It was cruelty to deny him the words—­the mere empty words—­he asked of her.

“I—­I would do anything to please you!” she said, with a sudden burst of uncontrollable tears, as she laid her head down beside him on the pillow.  “If he were to ask me again, of course, for your sake, I would consider it once more.  Dear, dear friend, won’t that satisfy you?”

Lord Lackington was silent a few moments, then he smiled.

“That’s a promise?”

She raised herself and looked at him, conscious of a sick movement of terror.  What was there in his mind, still so quick, fertile, ingenious, under the very shadow of death?

He waited for her answer, feebly pressing her hand.

“Yes,” she said, faintly, and once more hid her face beside him.

Then, for some little time, the dying man neither stirred nor spoke.  At last Julie heard: 

“I used to be afraid of death—­that was in middle life.  Every night it was a torment.  But now, for many years, I have not been afraid at all....  Byron—­Lord Byron—­said to me, once, he would not change anything in his life; but he would have preferred not to have lived at all.  I could not say that.  I have enjoyed it all—­being an Englishman, and an English peer—­pictures, politics, society—­everything.  Perhaps it wasn’t fair.  There are so many poor devils.”

Julie pressed his hand to her lips.  But in her thoughts there rose the sudden, sharp memory of her mother’s death—­of that bitter stoicism and abandonment in which the younger life had closed, in comparison with this peace, this complacency.

Yet it was a complacency rich in sweetness.  His next words were to assure her tenderly that he had made provision for her.  “Uredale and Bill—­will see to it.  They’re good fellows.  Often—­they’ve thought me—­a pretty fool.  But they’ve been kind to me—­always.”

Then, after another interval, he lifted himself in bed, with more strength than she had supposed he could exert, looked at her earnestly, and asked her, in the same painful whisper, whether she believed in another life.

“Yes,” said Julie.  But her shrinking, perfunctory manner evidently distressed him.  He resumed, with a furrowed brow: 

“You ought.  It is good for us to believe it.”