'Give up Winifred, mother? That is not possible.'
'Then there is no more to be said. We will not waste our time in discussing impossibilities. And I am really so depressed and unwell that I must return to my room. I hope to hear you are better in the morning, and I think you will be. The excitement of this night and your anxiety about the girl have unstrung your nerves, and you have lost that courage and endurance which are yours by birthright.'
But she had no sooner gone than there came before my eyes the insupportable picture of a slim figure walking along the sands stooping to look at some object among the _débris_, standing aghast at the sight of her dead father with the evidence of his hideous crime on his own breast; there came the sound of a cry to 'Henry' for help! I beat my head against the bedstead till I was nearly stunned. I yelled and bellowed like a maniac: 'Mother, come back!'
When she returned to my bedside my eyes were glaring so that my mother stood appalled, and (as she afterwards owned to me) was nearly yielding her point.
'Mother,' I said,'I consent to your condition: I will give her up--but oh, save her! Let there be no dallying, let there be no risk, mother. Let nothing prevent your going upon the sands in the morning--early, quite early--and every morning at the ebbing of the tide.'
'You will use the fullest and best means to save her?'
'I will keep my word,' she said, and left the room.
'I have saved her!' I cried over and over again, as I sank back on my pillow. Then the delirium of fever came upon me, and I lay tossing as upon a sea of fire.
Weak in body and in mind as an infant, I woke again to consciousness. Through the open window the sunlight, with that tender golden-yellow tone which comes with morning in England, was pouring between the curtains, and illuminating the white counterpane. Then a soft breeze came and slightly moved the curtains, and sent the light and shadows about the bed and the opposite wall--a breeze laden with the scent I always associated with Wynne's cottage, the scent of geraniums. I raised myself on my elbows, and gazed over the geraniums on the window-sill at the blue sky, which was as free of clouds as though it were an Italian one, save that a little feathery cloud of a palish gold was slowly moving towards the west.