attitude betrayed the presence of some overwhelming despair.

"Please, sir, my lady is ill. Shall I send for anyone?"

No answer. Hester repeated her words, but Sir Richard never stirred.
Much alarmed, the woman raised his head, saw that he was unconscious,
and rang for help. But Richard Trevlyn was past help, though he lingered
for some hours. He spoke but once, murmuring faintly, "Will Alice come
to say good-bye?"

"Bring her if she can come," said the physician.

Hester went, found her mistress lying as she left her, like a figure
carved in stone. When she gave the message, Lady Trevlyn answered
sternly, "Tell him I will not come," and turned her face to the wall,
with an expression which daunted the woman too much for another word.

Hester whispered the hard answer to the physician, fearing to utter it
aloud, but Sir Richard heard it, and died with a despairing prayer for
pardon on his lips.

When day dawned Sir Richard lay in his shroud and his little daughter in
her cradle, the one unwept, the other unwelcomed by the wife and mother,
who, twelve hours before, had called herself the happiest woman in
England. They thought her dying, and at her own command gave her the
sealed letter bearing her address which her husband left behind him. She
read it, laid it in her bosom, and, waking from the trance which seemed
to have so strongly chilled and changed her, besought those about her
with passionate earnestness to save her life.