I neither answered her nor looked at her.

Still determined to reach her end, she tried again to force her
unhappy daughter on me. "Will you consent," she persisted, "to
see Susan?"

If she had been a little nearer to me, I am afraid I should have
struck her. "You wretch!" I said, "do you know that I am a dying
man?"

"While there's life there's hope," Mrs. Rymer remarked.

I ought to have controlled myself; but it was not to be done.

"Hope of your daughter being my rich widow?" I asked.

Her bitter answer followed instantly.

"Even then," she said, "Susan wouldn't marry Rothsay."

A lie! If circumstances favored her, I knew, on Rothsay's
authority, what Susan would do.

The thought burst on my mind, like light bursting on the eyes of
a man restored to sight. If Susan agreed to go through the form
of marriage with a dying bridegroom, my rich widow could (and
would) become Rothsay's wife. Once more, the remembrance of the
play at Rome returned, and set the last embers of resolution,
which sickness and suffering had left to me, in a flame. The
devoted friend of that imaginary story had counted on death to