with you, dear Adrian! God bless you and your household, and
your children, and your children's children! Hear my last words: _From
my death will be born your happiness, and if its growth be slow, yet
it will wax strong and sure as the years go by_."

The words broke from him with prophetic solemnity; their hands fell
apart, and Adrian, led by the jailer, stumbled forth blindly. Jack
Smith stood erect, still smiling, watching them: were Adrian to turn
he should find no weakness, no faltering for the final remembrance.

But Adrian did not turn. And the door closed, closed upon hope and
happiness and life, shut in shame and death. Out yonder, with Adrian,
was the fresh bright world, the sea, the sunshine, the dear ones; here
the prison smells, the gloom, the constraint, the inflicted dreadful
death. All his hard-won calm fled from him; all his youth, his immense
vitality woke up and cried out in him again. He raised his hands and
pulled fiercely at his collar as if already the rope were round his
neck strangling him. His blood hammered in his brain. God--God--it
was impossible--it could not be--it was a dream!

Beyond, from far distant in the street came the cry of a little child:

"Da-da--daddy."

The prisoner threw up his arms and then fell upon his face upon the
bed, torn by sobs.

Yes, Adrian would have children; but Hubert Cochrane, who, from the
beautiful young brood that was to have sprung from his loins would
have grafted on the old stock a fresh and noble tree, he was to pass
barren out of life and leave no trace behind him.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE ONE HE LOVED AND THE ONE WHO LOVED HIM

On the evening of the previous day Lady Landale and her Aunt had
arrived at Pulwick. The drive had been a dismal one to poor Miss
O'Donoghue. Neither her angry expostulations, nor her tender
remonstrances, nor her attempts at consolation could succeed in
drawing a connected sentence from Molly, who, with a fever spot of red
upon each cheek only roused herself from the depth of thought in which
she seemed plunged to urge the coachman to greater speed. Miss
O'Donoghue tried the whole gamut of her art in vain, and was obliged
at last to desist from sheer weariness and in much anxiety.

Madeleine and Sophia were seated by the fireside in the library when
the unexpected travellers came in upon them. Sophia, in the blackest
of black weeds, started guiltily up from the volume of "The Corsair,"
in which she had been plung