Sir George didn’t say anything after that, and she swept out of the cell, followed by Mr. Falkland and him. It was just as well for him to keep a quiet tongue in his head. I expect she was a great heiress as well as a great beauty, and people of that sort, I’ve found, mostly get listened to when they speak. When the door shut I felt as if I’d seen the wings of an angel flit through it, and the prison grew darker and darker like the place of lost souls.

Chapter LI

CHAPTER LI

One day I was told that a lady wanted to see me. When the door of the cell opened who should walk in but Aileen! I didn’t look to have seen her. I didn’t bother my head about who was coming. What did it matter, as I kept thinking, who came or who went for the week or two that was to pass before the day? Yes, the day, that Thursday, when poor Dick Marston would walk over the threshold of his cell, and never walk over one again.

The warder—him that stopped with me day and night—every man in the condemned cell has to be watched like that—stepped outside the door and left us together. We both looked at one another. She was dressed all in black, and her face was that pale I hardly knew her at first. Then she said,“Oh, Dick—my poor Dick! is this the way we meet?” and flings herself into my arms. How she cried and sobbed, to be sure. The tears ran down her cheeks like rain, and every time the leg-irons rattled she shook and trembled as if her heart was breaking.

I tried to comfort her; it was no use.

“Let me cry on, Dick,” she said; “I have not shed a tear since I first heard the news—the miserable truth that has crushed all our vain hopes and fancies; my heart has nearly burst for want of relief. This will do me good. To think—to think that this should be the end of all But it is just! I cannot dare to doubt Heaven’s mercy. What else could we expect, living as we all did—in sin—in mortal sin? I am punished rightly.”

She told me all about poor mother’s death. She never held up her head after she heard of Jim’s death. She never said a hard word about any one. It was God’s will, she thought, and only for His mercy things might have gone worse. The only pleasure she had in her last days was in petting Jim’s boy. He was a fine little chap, and had eyes like his father, poor old Jim! Then Aileen broke down altogether, and it was a while before she could speak again.