“Oh, Harry, Harry,” she sobbed out, “know you not that is why I cannot bear it longer, because you yourself bear it with no complaint?” Then she sobbed and even wailed with that piteousness of the grief of age exceeding that of infancy, inasmuch as the weight of all past griefs of a lifetime go to swell it, and it is enhanced by memory as well as by the present and an unknown future.  I knew not what to do, but laid a hand somewhat timidly on one of her thin silken arms, and strove to draw it gently from her face; “Madam Cavendish,” I said, “indeed you mistake if you weep for me.  At this moment I would change places with no man in Virginia.”

“But I would have—­I would have you!” she cried out, with the ardour of a girl, and down went her apron, and her face, like an aged mask of tragedy, not discoloured by her tears, as would have happened with the tender skin of a maid, confronted me.  “I would have you the governor himself, Harry.  I would have you—­I would have—­” Then she stopped and looked at me with a red showing through the yellow whiteness of her cheeks.  “You know what I would have, and I know what you would have, and all the rest of my old life would I give could it be so, Harry,” she said, and I saw that she knew of my love for her granddaughter Mary.  Then suddenly she cried out, vehemently:  “Not one word have I said to you about it since that dreadful time, Harry Wingfield, for shame and that pride as to my name, which is a fetter on the tongue, hath kept me still, but at last I will speak, for I can bear it no longer.  Harry, Harry, I know that you are what you are, a convict and an exile, to shield Catherine, to shield a granddaughter of mine, who should be in your place.  Harry Wingfield, I know that Catherine Cavendish is guilty of the crime for which you are in punishment, and, woe is me, such is my pride, such is my wicked pride, that I have let you suffer and said never one word.”

I put her hand to my lips.  “Madam,” I said, “you mistake; I do not suffer.  That which you think of as my suffering and my disgrace is my glory and happiness.”

“Yes, and why, and why?  Oh, Harry, ’tis that which is breaking my heart.  ’Tis because you love Mary, ’tis because, I verily believe, you have loved her from the first minute you set eyes on her, though she was but a baby in arms.  At first I thought it was Catherine, in spite of her fault, but now I know it was for the sake of Mary that you sacrificed yourself—­for her sister, Harry, I know, I know, and I would to God that I could give you your heart’s desire, for ’tis mine also!”

Then, so saying, this old woman, who had in her such a majesty of character and pride that it held folk aloof at a farther distance than loud swaggerings of importance of men high in office, drew down my head to her withered shoulder and touched my cheek with a hand of compassionate pity and blessing, as if I had been in truth her son, and caught her breath again and again with a sobbing sigh.  All that