It did not come till near morning. Once during the night Captain Bruce
opened his eyes and looked about him, but either his mind was confused,
or--who knows?--made clearer by the approach of death, for he
evinced no sign of surprise at the earl's presence in the room. He only
fixed upon him a long, searching, inquiring gaze, which seemed to compel
an answer.
Lord Cairnforth spoke:
"Cousin, I am come to take home with me your wife and child. Are you
satisfied?"
"Yes."
"I promise you they shall never want. I will take care of them always."
There was a faint assenting movement of the dying head, and then, just
as Helen went out of the room with her baby, Captain Bruce followed her
with his eyes, in which the earl thought was an expression almost
approaching tenderness. "Poor thing--poor thing! Her long trouble
is over."
These were the last words he ever said, for shortly afterward he again
fell into a sleep, out of which he passed quietly and without pain into
sleep eternal. They looked at him, and he was still breathing; they
looked at him a few minutes after, and he was, as Mr. Cardross would
have expressed it, "away"--far, far away--in His safe keeping with
whom abide the souls of both the righteous and the wicked, the living
and the dead.
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