As Marsham saw it the color rushed into his
cheeks. He stooped and raised it. Suddenly he noticed on the margin of
the paper a pencilled line, faint and wavering, like the words written
on the envelope. It ran beside a passage in the article "from a
correspondent," and as he looked at it consciousness and pulse paused
in dismay. There, under his eye, in that dim mark, was the last word and
sign of John Ferrier.
He was still staring at it when a sound disturbed him. Lady Lucy came to
him, feebly, across the grass. Marsham dropped the newspaper, retaining
Broadstone's letter.
"Sir James wished me to leave him a little," she said, brokenly. "The
ambulance will be here directly. They will take him to Lytchett. I
thought it should have been Tallyn. But Sir James decided it."
"Mother!"--Marsham moved toward her, reluctantly--"here is a letter--no
doubt of importance. And--it is addressed to you."
Lady Lucy gave a little cry. She looked at the pencilled address, with
quivering lips; then she opened the envelope, and on the back of the
closely written letter she saw at once Ferrier's last words to her.
Marsham, moved by a son's natural impulse, stooped and kissed her hair.
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