wife's lace as would have bought many a set of inferior jewellery.
Lettice well became it all. If as people said, her father had been
nothing but a French adventurer, she bore traces of her nature in her
grace, her delicacy, her fascinating and elegant ways of doing all
things. She was made for society; and yet she hated it. And one day she
went out of it altogether and for evermore. She had been well in the
morning when Edward went down to his office in Hamley. At noon he was
sent for by hurried trembling messengers. When he got home breathless
and uncomprehending, she was past speech. One glance from her lovely
loving black eyes showed that she recognised him with the passionate
yearning that had been one of the characteristics of her love through
life. There was no word passed between them. He could not speak, any
more than could she. He knelt down by her. She was dying; she was dead;
and he knelt on immovable. They brought him his eldest child, Ellinor,
in utter despair what to do in order to rouse him. They had no thought
as to the effect on her, hitherto shut up in the nursery during this busy
day of confusion and alarm. The child had no idea of death, and her
father, kneeling and tearless, was far less an object of surprise or
interest to her than her mother, lying still and white, and not turning
her head to smile at her darling.

"Mamma! mamma!" cried the child, in shapeless terror. But the mother
never stirred; and the father hid his face yet deeper in the bedclothes,
to stifle a cry as if a sharp knife had pierced his heart. The child
forced her impetuous way from her attendants, and rushed to the bed.
Undeterred by deadly cold or stony immobility, she kissed the lips and
stroked the glossy raven hair, murmuring sweet words of wild love, such
as had passed between the mother and child often and often when no
witnesses were by; and altogether seemed so nearly beside herself in an
agony of love and terror, that Edward arose, and softly taking her in his