Years passed. Insensibly Augustina's health began to fail; and with it
the new cheerfulness of her middle life. Then Fountain himself fell
suddenly and dangerously ill. All the peaceful habits and small pleasures
of their common existence broke down after a few days, as it were, into a
miserable confusion. Augustina stood bewildered. Then a convulsion of
soul she had expected as little as anyone else, swept upon her. A number
of obscure, inherited, half-dead instincts revived. She lived in terror;
she slept, weeping; and at the back of an old drawer she found a rosary
of her childhood to which her fingers clung night and day.

Meanwhile Fountain resigned himself to death. During his last days his
dimmed senses did not perceive what was happening to his wife. But he
troubled himself about her a good deal.

"Take care of her, Laura," he said once, "till she gets strong. Look
after her.--But you can't sacrifice your life.--It may be Christian," he
added, in a murmur, "but it isn't sense."

Unconsciousness came on. Augustina seemed to lose her wits; and at last
only Laura, sitting pale and fierce beside her father, prevented her
stepmother from bringing a priest to his death-bed. "You would not
_dare_!" said the girl, in her low, quivering voice; and Augustina could
only wring her hands.

* * * * *

The day after her husband died Mrs. Fountain returned to her Catholic
duties. When she came back from confession, she slipped as noiselessly as
she could into the darkened house. A door opened upstairs, and Laura came