“Does it torture you still?” she asked.

“No,” he said; “I have never heard it plainly, since I left Rome.  It has grown fainter and fainter from that time.  It is not a Voice now.  It is hardly a whisper:  my repentance is accepted, my release is coming.—­Where is Winterfield?”

She pointed to me.

“I spoke of Rome just now.  What did Rome remind me of?” He slowly recovered the lost recollection.  “Tell Winterfield,” he whispered to Stella, “what the Nuncio said when he knew that I was going to die.  The great man reckoned up the dignities that might have been mine if I had lived.  From my place here in the Embassy—­”

“Let me say it,” she gently interposed, “and spare your strength for better things.  From your place in the Embassy you would have mounted a step higher to the office of Vice-Legate.  Those duties wisely performed, another rise to the Auditorship of the Apostolic Chamber.  That office filled, a last step upward to the highest rank left, the rank of a Prince of the Church.”

“All vanity!” said the dying Romayne.  He looked at his wife and his child.  “The true happiness was waiting for me here.  And I only know it now.  Too late.  Too late.”

He laid his head back on the pillow and closed his weary eyes.  We thought he was composing himself to sleep.  Stella tried to relieve him of the boy.  “No,” he whispered; “I am only resting my eyes to look at him again.”  We waited.  The child stared at me, in infantine curiosity.  His mother knelt at his side, and whispered in his ear.  A bright smile irradiated his face; his clear brown eyes sparkled; he repeated the forgotten lesson of the bygone time, and called me once more, “Uncle Ber’.”

Romayne heard it.  His heavy eyelids opened again.  “No,” he said.  “Not uncle.  Something better and dearer.  Stella, give me your hand.”

Still kneeling, she obeyed him.  He slowly raised himself on the chair.  “Take her hand,” he said to me.  I too knelt.  Her hand lay cold in mine.  After a long interval he spoke to me.  “Bernard Winterfield,” he said, “love them, and help them, when I am gone.”  He laid his weak hand on our hands, clasped together.  “May God protect you! may God bless you!” he murmured.  “Kiss me, Stella.”

I remember no more.  As a man, I ought to have set a better example; I ought to have preserved my self-control.  It was not to be done.  I turned away from them—­and burst out crying.

The minutes passed.  Many minutes or few minutes, I don’t know which.

A soft knock at the door aroused me.  I dashed away the useless tears.  Stella had retired to the further end of the room.  She was sitting by the fireside, with the child in her arms.  I withdrew to the same part of the room, keeping far enough away not to disturb them.

Two strangers came in and placed themselves on either side of Romayne’s chair.  He seemed to recognize them unwillingly.  From the manner in which they examined him, I inferred that they were medical men.  After a consultation in low tones, one of them went out.