'Ah! sister,' he said to me, 'I
see now what Philippe would have made me.'
He asked my pardon most touchingly for his share in trying to abduct
me, and Clement Darpent's also for the attack on him, though, as he
said, Darpent had long before shown his forgiveness. His little
children were brought to him, making large eyes with fright at his
deathlike looks, and clinging to their mother, too much terrified to
cry when he kissed them, blessed them, and bade Maurice consider his
mother, and obey her above all things, and to regard me as next to
her.
'Ah! if I had had such a loving mother I should never have become so
brutally selfish,' he said; and, indeed, the sight of her sweet,
tender, patient face seemed to make him grieve for all the sins of
his dissipated life. His confessor declared that he was in the most
pious disposition of penitence. And thus, one summer evening, with
his wife, Madame Darpent, and myself watching and praying round him,
Armand d'Aubepine passed away from the temptations that beset a
French noble.
I took my poor Cecile home sinking into a severe illness, which I
thought for many days would be her death. All her old terror of
Madame Croquelebois returned, and for many nights and days Madame
Darpent or I had to be constantly with her, though we had outside
troubles enough of our own. Those two sick-rooms seem to swallow up
my recollection.
CHAPTER XXXII
ESCAPE
(Annora's Narrative)
There was indeed a good deal passing beyond those rooms where
Margaret was so absorbed in her d'Aubepines that I sometimes thought
she forgot her own kindred in them.
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