The reaction of feeling begins when he perceives that Mertoun has allowed himself to be killed. Remorse and sorrow deepen into despair as the dying youth gasps out the story of his constant love, of his boyish error--of his manly desire of reparation; above all, as he reminds his hearer of the sister whose happiness he has slain; and asks if he has done right to set his "thoughtless foot" upon them both, and say as they perish--
"... Had I thought, 'All had gone otherwise'...." (vol iv. p. 59.)
Mildred is waiting for her lover. The usual signal has been made: the lighted purple pane of a painted window sends forth its beckoning gleam. But Mertoun does not appear; and as the moments pass, a despairing apathy steals over her, which is only the completed certainty of her doom. She has never believed in the promised happiness. In a strange process of self-consciousness she has realized at once the moral and the natural consequences of her transgression; the lost peace of conscience, the lost morning of her love. Her paramount desire has been for expiation and rest. In one more pang they are coming. Lord Tresham breaks in on her solitude. His empty scabbard shows what he has done. But she soon sees that reproach is unnecessary, and that Mertoun's death is avenged. It is best so. The cloud has lifted. The friend and the brother are one in heart again. She dies because her own heart is broken, but forgiving her brother, and blessing him. He has taken poison, and survives her by a few minutes only.
Mildred has a firm friend in her cousin Gwendolen: a quick-witted, true-hearted woman, the betrothed of Austin Tresham, who is next heir to the earldom. She alone has guessed the true state of the case, and, with the help of Austin, would have averted the tragedy, if Lord Tresham's precipitate passion had not rendered this impossible. These two are in no need of their dying kinsman's warning, to remember, if a blot should again come in the 'scutcheon, that "vengeance is God's, not man's."
This tragedy was performed in 1843, at Drury Lane Theatre, during the ownership of Macready; in 1848, at "Sadlers Wells," under the direction of Mr. Phelps, who had played the part of Lord Tresham in the Drury Lane performance.