Edith remained silent for some minutes, with Florence sitting close beside her. Then she took from her bosom a sealed paper.
“I debated with myself a long time,” she said in a low voice, “whether to write this at all, in case of dying suddenly or by accident, and feeling the want of it upon me. I have deliberated, ever since, when and how to destroy it. Take it, Florence. The truth is written in it.”
“Is it for Papa?” asked Florence.
“It is for whom you will,” she answered. “It is given to you, and is obtained by you. He never could have had it otherwise.”
Again they sat silent, in the deepening darkness.
“Mama,” said Florence, “he has lost his fortune; he has been at the point of death; he may not recover, even now. Is there any word that I shall say to him from you?”
“Did you tell me,” asked Edith, “that you were very dear to him?”
“Yes!” said Florence, in a thrilling voice.
“Tell him I am sorry that we ever met.”
“No more?” said Florence after a pause.
“Tell him, if he asks, that I do not repent of what I have done—not yet—for if it were to do again tomorrow, I should do it. But if he is a changed man—”
She stopped. There was something in the silent touch of Florence’s hand that stopped her.
“—But that being a changed man, he knows, now, it would never be. Tell him I wish it never had been.”
“May I say,” said Florence, “that you grieved to hear of the afflictions he has suffered?”
“Not,” she replied, “if they have taught him that his daughter is very dear to him. He will not grieve for them himself, one day, if they have brought that lesson, Florence.”
“You wish well to him, and would have him happy. I am sure you would!” said Florence. “Oh! let me be able, if I have the occasion at some future time, to say so?”
Edith sat with her dark eyes gazing steadfastly before her, and did not reply until Florence had repeated her entreaty; when she drew her hand within her arm, and said, with the same thoughtful gaze upon the night outside:
“Tell him that if, in his own present, he can find any reason to compassionate my past, I sent word that I asked him to do so. Tell him that if, in his own present, he can find a reason to think less bitterly of me, I asked him to do so. Tell him, that, dead as we are to one another, never more to meet on this side of eternity, he knows there is one feeling in common between us now, that there never was before.”
Her sternness seemed to yield, and there were tears in her dark eyes.
“I trust myself to that,” she said, “for his better thoughts of me, and mine of him. When he loves his Florence most, he will hate me least. When he is most proud and happy in her and her children, he will be most repentant of his own part in the dark vision of our married life. At that time, I will be repentant too—let him know it then—and think that when I thought so much of all the causes that had made me what I was, I needed to have allowed more for the causes that had made him what he was. I will try, then, to forgive him his share of blame. Let him try to forgive me mine!”
“Oh Mama!” said Florence. “How it lightens my heart, even in such a strange meeting and parting, to hear this!”
“Strange words in my own ears,” said Edith, “and foreign to the sound of my own voice! But even if I had been the wretched creature I have given him occasion to believe me, I think I could have said them still, hearing that you and he were very dear to one another. Let him, when you are dearest, ever feel that he is most forbearing in his thoughts of me—that I am most forbearing in my thoughts of him! Those are the last words I send him! Now, goodbye, my life!”
She clasped her in her arms, and seemed to pour out all her woman’s soul of love and tenderness at once.
“This kiss for your child! These kisses for a blessing on your head! My own dear Florence, my sweet girl, farewell!”
“To meet again!” cried Florence.
“Never again! Never again! When you leave me in this dark room, think that you have left me in the grave. Remember only that I was once, and that I loved you!”
And Florence left her, seeing her face no more, but accompanied by her embraces and caresses to the last.
Cousin Feenix met her at the door, and took her down to Walter in the dingy dining room, upon whose shoulder she laid her head weeping.
“I am devilish sorry,” said Cousin Feenix, lifting his wristbands to his eyes in the simplest manner possible, and without the least concealment, “that the lovely and accomplished daughter of my friend Dombey and amiable wife of my friend Gay, should have had her sensitive nature so very much distressed and cut up by the interview which is just concluded. But I hope and trust I have acted for the best, and that my honourable friend Dombey will find his mind relieved by the disclosures which have taken place. I exceedingly lament that my friend Dombey should have got himself, in point of fact, into the devil’s own state of conglomeration by an alliance with our family; but am strongly of opinion that if it hadn’t been for the infernal scoundrel Barker—man with white teeth—everything would have gone on pretty smoothly. In regard to my relative who does me the honour to have formed an uncommonly good opinion of myself, I can assure the amiable wife of my friend Gay, that she may rely on my being, in point of fact, a father to her. And in regard to the changes of human life, and
