The twenty-fourth day of November 1690

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"If she is--beautiful, and has but her father, and no mother!" she whispered, the words dragged forth slowly, "only evil can come to her. From her first hour--she will know naught else, poor heart, poor heart!"

There was a rattling in her throat as she breathed, but in her glazing eyes a gleam like passion leaped, and gasping, she dragged nearer.

"'Tis not fair," she cried. "If I--if I could lay my hand upon thy mouth--and stop thy breathing--thou poor thing, 'twould be fairer-- but--I have no strength."

She gathered all her dying will and brought her hand up to the infant's mouth. A wild look was on her poor, small face, she panted and fell forward on its breast, the rattle in her throat growing louder. The child awakened, opening great black eyes, and with her dying weakness its new-born life struggled. Her cold hand lay upon I its mouth, and her head upon its body, for she was too far gone to move if she had willed to do so. But the tiny creature's strength was marvellous. It gasped, it fought, its little limbs struggled beneath her, it writhed until the cold hand fell away, and then, its baby mouth set free, it fell a-shrieking. Its cries were not like those of a new-born thing, but fierce and shrill, and even held the sound of infant passion. 'Twas not a thing to let its life go easily, 'twas of those born to do battle.

Its lusty screaming pierced her ear perhaps--she drew a long, slow breath, and then another, and another still--the last one trembled and stopped short, and the last cinder fell dead from the fire.

* * *

When the nurse came bustling and fretting back, the chamber was cold as the grave's self--there were only dead embers on the hearth, the new-born child's cries filled all the desolate air, and my lady was lying stone dead, her poor head resting on her offspring's feet, the while her open glazed eyes seemed to stare at it as if in asking Fate some awful question.