"I did promise," Constance answered, calmly, almost proudly "and he will keep it."
Then she turned to Guy, who was kneeling by her, and hid her face in his neck, locking her arms round him. Her aunt caught the words--"Not forget!" Beyond these her farewell was a secret known only to her lover and the angels.
But the parting, which had come so suddenly, drained the last weak remnant of strength already taxed too hardly. Guy felt the lips that were murmuring in his car grow still at first, and then cold; the tender arms unknit themselves, and his imploring eyes could draw no answer from hers that were closed.
"She has only fainted," Mrs. Vavasour said, answering his look: "I will recover her. But pray, pray go!"
He laid the light burden that scarcely weighed upon his arm down on the pillows, very softly and gently, smoothing them mechanically with his hand. Then he stooped and pressed one kiss more on the pale lips; they never felt it, though the passion of that lengthened caress might almost have waked the dead. And so those two parted, to meet again--upon earth never any more.
The next time woman's lips touched Guy Livingstone's they were his mother's, and he had been a corpse an hour.
He went, without looking back; his step was slow and unsteady, very different from the firm, even tread of three hours ago. The power of volition and self-direction was very nearly gone. Through a half open door on the lower story he caught a glimpse of a haggard face lighted up by wolfish eyes, and heard a savage, growling voice. He felt that both eyes and voice cursed him as he passed; and afterward, recalling these things vaguely, as one does the incidents of a hideous dream, he knew that, for the second time, he had seen Cyril Brandon. Guy could hardly tell how he reached London that night, for the brain fever was coming on that the next morning held him in its clutches fast.
"Quanto minus est cum reliquis versari, quam tui meminisse."
The tidings of her son's illness reached Lady Catharine quickly at Kerton Manor. I did not hear of it till a day later, and when I arrived I found her nearly exhausted by sleeplessness and anxiety, though she had not been Guy's nurse for more than thirty-six hours.