He then approached the bed; Catherine, though very weak and suffering much pain, was still sensible.

She turned her dim eyes on the young man; but she did not recognise his features.
"You do not remember me ?" said he, in a voice struggling with tears: "I am Arthur--Arthur Beaufort." Catherine made no answer.
"Good Heavens! Why do I see you here?
I believed you with your friends--your children provided for--as became my father to do.

He assured me that you were so." Still no answer.
And then the young man, overpowered with the feelings of a sympathising and generous nature, forgetting for a while Catherine's weakness, poured forth a torrent of inquiries, regrets, and self-upbraidings, which Catherine at first little heeded.

But the name of her children, repeated again and again, struck upon that chord which, in a woman's heart, is the last to break; and she raised herself in her bed, and looked at her visitor wistfully.
"Your father," she said, then--"your father was unlike my Philip; but I see things differently now.

For me, all bounty is too late; but my children--to-morrow they may have no mother.