"Thank you, Jock, thank you," said she. "It was like your kindness to
bring the message. I heard of it nearly a week ago. I was mad for the
time--quite mad. I shall wear mourning all my days, although you can
see what a fright it makes me look. Ah! I shall never get over it.
I shall take the veil and die in a convent."

"If you please, madame," said a maid, looking in, "the Count de Beton
wishes to see you."

"My dear Jock," said Edie, jumping up, "this is very important. I am
sorry to cut our chat short, but I am sure that you will come to see me
again, will you not, when I am less desolate? And would you mind going
out by the side door instead of the main one? Thank you, you dear old
Jock; you were always such a good boy, and did exactly what you were
told."

And that was the last that I was ever to see of Cousin Edie. She stood
in the sunlight with the old challenge in her eyes, and flash of her
teeth; and so I shall always remember her, shining and unstable, like a
drop of quicksilver. As I joined my comrade in the street below, I saw
a grand carriage and pair at the door, and I knew that she had asked me
to slip out so that her grand new friends might never know what common
people she had been associated with in her childhood. She had never
asked for Jim, nor for my father and mother who had been so kind to her.
Well, it was just her way, and she could no more help it than a rabbit
can help wagging its scut, and yet it made me heavy-hearted to think of
it. Two months later I heard that she had married this same Count de
Beton, and she died in child-bed a year or two later.

And as for us, our work was done, for the great shadow had been cleared