Part 56 (1/2)

The sobs of the little seamstress shook the narrow bed, and appeared to distress Liz inexpressibly. Presently she glanced again at the face of Gladys, and was struck by its altered look. It was no longer sympathetic nor sweet in its expression, but very pale and hard and set, as if the iron had entered into the soul within.

'Is this quite true?' she asked, and her very voice had a hard, cold ring.

'When ye're deein', ye dinna perjure yersel',' replied Liz, with a faint return of the old caustic speech. 'If ye dinna believe me, ask him. Is Wat away? Teen, ye micht gang an' bring him back.'

The little seamstress rose obediently, and when they were alone behind the screens, Liz lifted her feeble hand again and touched the arm of Gladys.

'Oh, dinna tak' him! He's a bad man--bad, selfish, cruel; dinna tak'

him, or ye'll rue'd but yince. I dinna want to excuse mysel'. Maybe I wasna guid, but afore G.o.d I lo'ed him, an' I believed I wad be his wife.

Eh, d'ye think that'll be onything against me in the ither world? Eh, wummin, I'm feared! If only I had anither chance!'

That pitiful speech, and the unspeakable pathos on the face of Liz, lifted Gladys above the supreme bitterness of that moment.

'Oh, do not be afraid,' she cried, folding her gentle hands, whose very touch seemed to carry hope and healing. 'Jesus is so very tender with us; He will never send the erring away. Let us ask Him to be with you now, to give you of His own comfort and strength and hope.'

She knelt down by the bed, unconscious of any listener save the dying girl, and there prayed the most earnest and heartfelt prayer which had ever pa.s.sed her lips. While she was speaking, the other two had returned to the bed-side, and stood with bowed heads, listening with a deep and solemn awe to the words which seemed to bring heaven so very near to that little spot of earth. The dying girl's strength was evidently fast ebbing; the brilliance died out of her eyes, and the film of death took its place. She smiled faintly upon them all with a glance of sad recognition, but her last look, her last word, was for Gladys, and so she pa.s.sed within the portals of the unseen without a struggle, nay, even with an expression of deep peace upon her worn face.

A wasted life? Yes; and a death which might have wrung tears of pity from a heart of stone.

But the Pharisee, who wraps the robe of his respectability around him, and, with head high in the air, thanks G.o.d he is not as other men are, what spark of divine compa.s.sion or human feeling has he in his soul?

Yet what saith the Scriptures?--'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.'

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XLV.

THE BOLT FALLS.

From that sad death-bed Gladys pa.s.sed out into the open air alone.

'When you are ready, Teen,' she said, 'you can go home, and tell Miss Peck I shall come to-day, sometime. I have something to do first.'

She neither spoke to nor looked at Walter, but pa.s.sed out into the open square before the Cathedral, and down the old High Street, with a steady, purposeful step. The rain had ceased, but a heavy mist hung low and drearily over the city, and the wind swept across the roofs with a moaning cadence in its voice. The bitter coldness of the weather made no difference to the streets. Those depraved and melancholy men and women, the bold-looking girls and the wretched children, were constantly before the vision of Gladys as she walked, but she saw them not. For once in her life her unselfish heart was entirely concentrated upon its own concerns, and she was in a fever of conflicting emotions--a fever so high and so uncontrollable that she had to walk to keep it down. It was close upon the hour of afternoon tea at Bellairs Crescent when Gladys rang the bell.

'Is Mrs. Fordyce at home, Hardy?' she asked the servant; 'and is she alone--no visitors, I mean?'

'Quite alone, with Miss Mina, in the drawing-room, Miss Graham,'

announced the maid, with a smile, but thinking at the same time that the girl looked very white and tired. 'Miss Fordyce is spending the day at Polloks.h.i.+elds, and will dine and sleep there, we expect.'

Gladys nodded, gave her cloak and umbrella into the maid's hand, and went up-stairs, not with her usual springing step, but slowly, as if she were very tired.

Hardy, who had a genuine affection for the young mistress of Bourhill, looked after her with some concern on her honest face.

'She doesn't look a bit like a bride,' she said to herself. 'There's something gone wrong.'

With a little exclamation of joyful surprise, Mina jumped up from her stool before the fire.