aloof. Once you could never be near enough. Ah, I was young and fair
then! I'm old and ugly now. Come nearer, for I can not speak aloud,
and listen. Do you know why I have sent for you?"

He had approached the bedside. She caught his hand and held it in a
vise-like clutch.

"No," he said, recoiling.

"To give you my dying malediction--to curse you with my latest breath!
I hate you, Sir Jasper Kingsland, falsest of all mankind! and if the
dead can return and torment the living, then do you beware of me!"

She spoke in panting gasps, the death-rattle sounding in her skinny
throat. Shocked and scandalized, the rector interposed:

"My good woman, don't--for pity's sake, don't say such horrible things!"

But she never heeded him.

"I hate you!" she said, with a last effort. "I die hating you, and I
curse you with a dying woman's curse! May your life be a life of
torment and misery and remorse! May your son's life be blighted and
ruined! May he become an outcast among men! May sin and shame follow
him forever, and all of his abhorred race!"

Her voice died away. She glared helplessly up from the pillow. A
deep, stern, terrible "Amen!" came from her daughter's lips; then, with
a spasm, she half leaped from the bed, and fell back with a gurgling
cry--dead!