He was waiting secretly in the house—­waiting for her last moments; listening for her last words; watching his opportunity, perhaps, to enter the room again, and openly profane it by his presence!  I placed myself by the door, resolved, if he approached, to thrust him back, at any hazard, from the bedside.  How long I remained absorbed in watching before the darkness of the inner room, I know not—­but some time must have elapsed before the silence around me forced itself suddenly on my attention.  I turned towards Margaret; and, in an instant, all previous thoughts were suspended in my mind, by the sight that now met my eyes.

She had altered completely.  Her hands, so restless hitherto, lay quite still over the coverlid; her lips never moved; the whole expression of her face had changed—­the fever-traces remained on every feature, and yet the fever-look was gone.  Her eyes were almost closed; her quick breathing had grown calm and slow.  I touched her pulse; it was beating with a wayward, fluttering gentleness.  What did this striking alteration indicate?  Recovery?  Was it possible?  As the idea crossed my mind, every one of my faculties became absorbed in the sole occupation of watching her face; I could not have stirred an instant from the bed, for worlds.

The earliest dawn of day was glimmering faintly at the window, before another change appeared—­before she drew a long, sighing breath, and slowly opened her eyes on mine.  Their first look was very strange and startling to behold; for it was the look that was natural to her; the calm look of consciousness, restored to what it had always been in the past time.  It lasted only for a moment.  She recognised me; and, instantly, an expression of anguish and shame flew over the first terror and surprise of her face.  She struggled vainly to lift her hands—­so busy all through the night; so idle now!  A faint moan of supplication breathed from her lips; and she slowly turned her head on the pillow, so as to hide her face from my sight.

“Oh, my God! my God!” she murmured, in low, wailing tones, “I’ve broken his heart, and he still comes here to be kind to me!  This is worse than death!  I’m too bad to be forgiven—­leave me! leave me!—­oh, Basil, leave me to die!”

I spoke to her; but desisted almost immediately—­desisted even from uttering her name.  At the mere sound of my voice, her suffering rose to agony; the wild despair of the soul wrestling awfully with the writhing weakness of the body, uttered itself in words and cries horrible, beyond all imagination, to hear.  I sank down on my knees by the bedside; the strength which had sustained me for hours, gave way in an instant, and I burst into a passion of tears, as my spirit poured from my lips in supplication for hers—­tears that did not humiliate me; for I knew, while I shed them, that I had forgiven her!