As I drew near to the catastrophe I could hear the beating of her heart,
and her breath came short and gasping. When I related how I had caught
hold of the governess's hand, she was trembling, and an almost deadly
pallor overspread her white face. "Alice! oh, Alice!" she cried; and
when I told her how the lady ran back to the coupé for her bonnet, just
at the last moment for escaping, she broke out into a painful hysterical
laugh. "Just like her! Her bonnet! Yes; ha! ha! She would have come down
to dinner in her bonnet, the foolish pride! She was so afraid to show
her bare ears to a man! Oh! oh! Alice!"

At last the tears came to her relief, and she sobbed pitifully. "If you
had only known her goodness," she cried, "her self-sacrificing devotion,
her pure, kind heart! She was the best friend I ever had, and how she
loved that unhappy boy! She was more his mother than I, for she gave him
all a mother's love and all a mother's care and attention. Why did I let
her go with him? Why did I not keep her back from him?"

I told her how the poor woman's first thought had been the safety of the
child.

"And you have not seen her again? You do not know what has become of
her?"

I denied having seen her again. I could not describe to her the horrid
spectacle of the poor woman as I had seen her last, when taken by the
brave firemen from that infernal pile; for, strong as she forced herself
to appear, this would have been more than she could bear; so I told her
that the relief train started with the rescued before we could learn
anything of the rest; but of the certainty of their death there could
not be the slightest doubt.