He had believed in John
Saltram; had fancied him nobler and grander than himself, somehow; a man
who, under a careless half-scornful pretence of being worse than his
fellows, concealed a nature that was far above the common herd; and yet
this man had proved the merest caitiff, a weak cowardly villain.
"To take my hand in friendship, knowing what he had done, and how my
life was broken! to pretend sympathy; to play out the miserable farce to
the very last! Great heaven! that the man I have honoured could be
capable of so much baseness!"
The sleeper moved restlessly, the eyes were opened once more and turned
upon Gilbert, not with the same utter blankness as before, but without
the faintest recognition. The sick man saw some one watching him, and the
figure was associated with an unreal presence, the phantom of his brain,
which had been with him often in the day and night.
"The man again!" he muttered. "When will she come?" And then raising
himself upon his elbow, he cried imploringly, "Mother, you fetch her!"
He was speaking to his mother, whom he had loved very dearly--his mother
who had been dead fifteen years.
Gilbert's mind went back to that far-away time in Egypt, when he had lain
like this, helpless and unconscious, and this man had nursed and watched
him with unwearying tenderness.
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