and I won't give him up just yet. We are still bound
southward, with a fair wind. If the new scenes which I hope to show him
prove to be of no avail, I must reluctantly take him back to England.
In that case, which I don't like to contemplate, you may see him
again--perhaps in a month's time."

He might return in a month's time--return to hear of the death of the
one friend, on whose power and will to help him he might have relied.
If I failed to employ in his interests the short interval of life still
left to me, could I doubt (after what I had just read) what the end
would be? How could I help him? Oh, God! how could I help him?

Mrs. Rymer left the window, and returned to the chair which she had
occupied when I first received her.

"Are you quieter in your mind now?" she asked.

I neither answered her nor looked at her.

Still determined to reach her end, she tried again to force her unhappy
daughter on me. "Will you consent," she persisted, "to see Susan?"

If she had been a little nearer to me, I am afraid I should have struck
her. "You wretch!" I said, "do you know that I am a dying man?"

"While there's life there's hope," Mrs. Rymer remarked.

I ought to have controlled myself; but it was not to be done.

"Hope of your daughter being my rich widow?" I asked.

Her bitter answer followed instantly.

"Even then," she said, "Susan wouldn't marry Rothsay."

A lie! If circumstances favored her, I knew, on Rothsay's authority,
what Susan would do.

The thought burst on my mind, like light bursting on the eyes of a man
restored to sight. If Susan agreed to go through the form of marriage
with a dying bridegroom, my rich widow could (and would) become
Rothsay's wife. Once more, the remembrance of the play at Rome returned,
and set the last embers of resolution, which sickness and suffering had
left to me, in a flame. The devoted friend of that imaginary story had
counted on death to complete his generous purpose in vain: _he_ had
been condemned by the tribunal of man, and had been reprieved. I--in
his place, and with his self-sacrifice in my mind--might found a firmer
trust in the future; for I had been condemned by the tribunal of God.

Encouraged by my silence, the obstinate woman persisted. "Won't you even
send a message to Susan?" she asked.

Rashly, madly, without an instant's hesitation, I answered:

"Go back to Susan, and say I leave it to _her_."

Mrs. Rymer started to her feet. "You leave it