“Was it the Henderson did this?” said she aloud, as if asking the question of herself. “Could she have known this secret?”
“Did what? What secret?” asked he, anxiously.
A low, long sigh announced that the sick man was awaking; and in a faint voice he said, “I feel better, Dora. I have had a sleep, and been dreaming of home and long ago. To-morrow, or next day, perhaps, I may be strong enough to leave this. I want to be back there again. Nay, don't refuse me,” said he, timidly.
“I have a still longer one before me, Dora, and even less preparation for it. Harry, I have something to say to you, if I were strong enough to say it,--this evening, perhaps.” Wearied by the efforts he had made, he lay back again with a heavy sigh, and was silent.
“Is he worse--is he weaker?” asked his son.
A mournful nod of the head was her reply.
Young Martin arose and stole noiselessly from the room, he scarcely knew whither; he indeed cared not which way he turned. The future threw its darkest shadows before him. He had little to hope for, as little to love. His servant gave him a letter which Massingbred had left on his departure, but he never opened it; and in a listless vacuity he wandered out into the wood.
It was evening as he turned homeward. His first glance was towards the windows of his father's room. They were wont to be closely shuttered and fastened; now one of them lay partly open, and a slight breeze stirred the curtain within. A faint, sickly fear of he knew not what crept over him. He walked on quicker; but as he drew nigh the door, his servant met him. “Well!” cried he, as though expecting a message.
“Yes, sir, it is all over; he went off about an hour since.” The man added something; but Martin heard no more, but hurried to his room, and locked the door.
When Jack Massingbred found himself once more “in town,” and saw that the tide of the mighty world there rolled on the same full, boiling flood he had remembered it of yore, he began to wonder where and how he had latterly been spending his life. There were questions of politics--mighty interests of which every one was talking--of which he knew nothing; party changes and new social combinations had arisen of which he was utterly ignorant. But what he still more acutely deplored was that he himself had, so to say, dropped out of the memory of his friends, who accosted him with that half-embarrassed air that says, “Have you been ill?--or in India?--or how is it that we have n't met you about?” It was last session he had made a flash speech,--an effort that his own party extolled to the skies, and even the Opposition could only criticise the hardihood and presumption of so very young a member of the House,--and now already people had ceased to bear him in mind.