“What do you mean?”

“I mean that they were not prepared to grant that he was dead.  Henry and Mannering took him up on that assumption.  He may have been restored to animation and his vital forces recovered.  Why not?  There was nothing visible to indicate dissolution.  We have heard of trances, catalepsies, which simulate death so closely that even physicians are deceived.  Have not men been buried alive?  Tom’s father at this moment might be restored to life, if we only knew how to act.”

“Then—­” she said, with horrified eyes, and stopped.

He saw what he had done.

“God forgive me!  No, no, not that, Mary!  It’s all madness and moonshine!  This is delirium; it will kill me!  Don’t think I believe them, any more than Mannering did, or Henry did.  Henry has seen much death; he could not have been deceived.  Tom was dead, and your heart told you he was dead.  One cannot truly make any mistake in the presence of death; I know that.”

Mary was marvellously restrained, despite the fact that she had received this appalling blow and vividly suffered all that it implied.

“I will try to put it out of my mind, father,” she said quietly.  “But if Mr. Hardcastle is alive, I shall go mad!”

“He is not.  Mannering was positive.”

“Nevertheless, he may be.  And if he is, then Mr. May probably is.”

“Grotesque, horrible, worse than death even!  Keep your mind away from it, my darling, for the love of God!”

“Who knows what we can suffer till we are called to find out?  No, I shall not go mad.  But I must know to-day.  I cannot eat or sleep until I know.  I shall not live long if they don’t tell me quickly.”

Her father trembled and grew very white.

“This is the worst of all,” he said.  “These things will leave a burning brand.  I am ruined by them, and my life thrown down.  I, that thought I was strong, prove so weak that I can forget my own daughter, and out of cowardly misery speak of a thing she should never have known.  You have your revenge, Mary, for I shall go a broken man from this hour.  Nothing can ever be the same again.  My self-respect is gone.  I could have endured everything else—­ the things that I dreaded.  All I could have suffered and survived; but to have forgotten and stabbed you—­”

“Don’t, don’t—­come—­we have got each other, father—­we have still got each other.  The dead understand everything.  Who else matters?  Go to your room, and let your dear mind rest.  I am not suffering.  We cannot alter the past, and who would wish it, if they believe in eternal life?  I would not call Tom back if I had the power to do so.  Be sure of that.”