From time to time down through the years he had a softened, gentle
remembrance of her. When the news of her death came, furious and
unrelenting as he had been toward her, her passing softened it. Had
he known in time he would have insisted on her burial in the
Kingsnorth vault. But she had already been interred in New York
before the news of her death reached him.
The one bitter hatred of his life had been against the man who had
taken his sister in marriage and in so doing had killed all
possibility of Kingsnorth succeeding in his political and social
aspirations.
He heard vaguely of a daughter.
He took no interest in the news.
Now, however, the remembrance of his treatment of Angela burnt into
him. He especially repented of that merciless cable: "You have made
your bed; lie in it." It haunted him through the long hours of his
slow and painful illness. Had he helped her she might have been
alive to-day, and those bitter reflections that ate into him night
and day might have been replaced by gentler ones and so make his end
the more peaceful.
He thought of Angela's child and wondered if she were like his poor
dead sister. The wish to see the child became an obsession with him.
One morning, after a restless, feverish night, he sent for his
lawyer and told him to at once institute inquiries--find out if the
child was still living, and if so--where.
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