swords; and nothing but his slender income, which could not be taken
from him, remained. How he had worked to be a real artist, there in
Paris! Oh! poor Mimo. He had tried, but everything was so against a
gentleman; and Mirko such a delicate baby, and the mother's lovely face
so often sad. And then the time of the mother's first bad illness--how
they had watched and prayed, and Mimo had cried tears like a child, and
the doctor had said the South was the only thing to help their angel's
recovery. So to marry Ladislaus Shulski seemed the only way. He had a
villa in the sun at Nice and offered it to them; he was crazy about
her--Zara--at that time, though her skirts were not quite long, nor her
splendid hair done up.

When her thoughts reached this far, the black panther in the Zoo never
looked fiercer when Francis Markrute poked his stick between its bars to
stir it up on Sunday mornings.

The hateful, hateful memories! When she came to know what marriage
meant, and--a man! But it had saved the sweet mother's life for that
winter. And though it was a strain to extract anything from Ladislaus,
still, in the years that followed, often she had been able to help until
his money, too, was all gone--on gambling and women.

And then the dear mother died--died in cold and poverty, in a poor
little studio in Paris--in spite of her daughter's and Mimo's frantic
letters to Uncle Francis for help. She knew now that he had been far
away, in South Africa, at the time, and had never received them, until
too late; but then, it seemed as if God Himself had forsaken them. And
now came the memory of her solemn promise. Mirko should never be
deserted--the adored mother could die in peace about that. Her last
words came back now--out of the glowing coals: