She did what she could while Mrs. Erps was gone. She was praying, when her prayer was so far answered that Audrey recognised her. "Maggie..." and then "I am dying—forgive," and then caught up in her pains again while Maggie cried: "Don't! Don't! It is for you to forgive me; you will be all right soon—very soon." The pains drew off a little. Audrey began to speak very faintly. "I went to Lady Burdon—" Very feebly she told what had happened and Maggie, who had begged her, "Darling, don't talk—don't worry," listened as one that is held aghast. When the slow words failed, she did not at once realise that Audrey's voice had stopped. Mrs. Erps and the doctor found her kneeling by the still form with strangely staring, unweeping eyes.
"She has had a shock," the doctor began.
"They have killed her," Miss Oxford said.
Bending over the patient he did not notice her words nor the intensity of their tone; and there began to come very quickly a dreadful urgency that caused agony of grief to override the agony of hate that had possessed her.
There was a thin, new cry went up in the room: and that was life newly come. And there was heavy breathing with dreadful pause at each expiration's end and then the straining upward climb: and that was life fluttering to be gone. Longer the pauses grew and harsher the upward breath. Loud the thin cry struck in, and as though it called that fleeting life, and as though that fleeting life, in the act of springing away, turned its head at the sound, Audrey opened her eyes.
There seemed to be a question in them. Miss Oxford bent closely over her: "A boy, my darling."
She seemed to smile before she died.
CHAPTER VII
ENLISTMENT OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR