The people were astir already, moving rapidly, in one direction, through the streets.  Adam tried not to think where they were going, as they hurried past him in that short space between his lodging and the prison gates.  He was thankful when the gates shut him in from seeing those eager people.

No; there was no news come—­no pardon—­no reprieve.

Adam lingered in the court half an hour before he could bring himself to send word to Dinah that he was come.  But a voice caught his ear:  he could not shut out the words.

“The cart is to set off at half-past seven.”

It must be said—­the last good-bye:  there was no help.

In ten minutes from that time, Adam was at the door of the cell.  Dinah had sent him word that she could not come to him; she could not leave Hetty one moment; but Hetty was prepared for the meeting.

He could not see her when he entered, for agitation deadened his senses, and the dim cell was almost dark to him.  He stood a moment after the door closed behind him, trembling and stupefied.

But he began to see through the dimness—­to see the dark eyes lifted up to him once more, but with no smile in them.  O God, how sad they looked!  The last time they had met his was when he parted from her with his heart full of joyous hopeful love, and they looked out with a tearful smile from a pink, dimpled, childish face.  The face was marble now; the sweet lips were pallid and half-open and quivering; the dimples were all gone—­all but one, that never went; and the eyes—­O, the worst of all was the likeness they had to Hetty’s.  They were Hetty’s eyes looking at him with that mournful gaze, as if she had come back to him from the dead to tell him of her misery.

She was clinging close to Dinah; her cheek was against Dinah’s.  It seemed as if her last faint strength and hope lay in that contact, and the pitying love that shone out from Dinah’s face looked like a visible pledge of the Invisible Mercy.

When the sad eyes met—­when Hetty and Adam looked at each other—­she felt the change in him too, and it seemed to strike her with fresh fear.  It was the first time she had seen any being whose face seemed to reflect the change in herself:  Adam was a new image of the dreadful past and the dreadful present.  She trembled more as she looked at him.

“Speak to him, Hetty,” Dinah said; “tell him what is in your heart.”

Hetty obeyed her, like a little child.

“Adam...I’m very sorry...I behaved very wrong to you...will you forgive me...before I die?”

Adam answered with a half-sob, “Yes, I forgive thee Hetty.  I forgave thee long ago.”

It had seemed to Adam as if his brain would burst with the anguish of meeting Hetty’s eyes in the first moments, but the sound of her voice uttering these penitent words touched a chord which had been less strained.  There was a sense of relief from what was becoming unbearable, and the rare tears came—­they had never come before, since he had hung on Seth’s neck in the beginning of his sorrow.