She knelt down by the bed, unconscious of any listener save the dying girl, and there prayed the most earnest and heartfelt prayer which had ever passed her lips. While she was speaking, the other two had returned to the bed-side, and stood with bowed heads, listening with a deep and solemn awe to the words which seemed to bring heaven so very near to that little spot of earth. The dying girl's strength was evidently fast ebbing; the brilliance died out of her eyes, and the film of death took its place. She smiled faintly upon them all with a glance of sad recognition, but her last look, her last word, was for Gladys, and so she passed within the portals of the unseen without a struggle, nay, even with an expression of deep peace upon her worn face.
A wasted life? Yes; and a death which might have wrung tears of pity from a heart of stone.
But the Pharisee, who wraps the robe of his respectability around him, and, with head high in the air, thanks God he is not as other men are, what spark of divine compassion or human feeling has he in his soul?
Yet what saith the Scriptures?—'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.'
CHAPTER XLV.
THE BOLT FALLS.
rom that sad death-bed Gladys passed out into the open air alone.