Then she rallied, and a sudden spark glowed in her dull eyes, as when a gust stirs an ash heap, and uncovers a dying ember.
"Erle Palma?"
"Has gone to Washington."
"May he never come back! O God! a hundred deaths would not satisfy me! A hundred graves were not sufficient to hide him from my sight!"
She groaned and clasped her hand across her eyes.
"What dreadful thing has occurred? Tell me, you know that you can trust me."
"Trust! no, no; not even the archangels that fan the throne of God. I have done with trust. Take me in your room a little while. Hide me from mamma until to-morrow; then it will make no difference who sees me."
Regina led her to the low rocking chair in her own room, and took off the common shawl and bonnet which she had used as a disguise, then seized her cold nerveless hand.
"Do tell me your great sorrow."
"Something rare nowaday. I had a heart, a live, warm, loving heart, and it is broken; dead—utterly dead. Regina, I was so happy yesterday. Oh! I stood at the very gate of heaven, so close that all the glory and the sweetness blew upon me, like June breezes over a rose hedge; and the angels seemed to beckon me in. I went to meet Belmont, to join him for ever, to turn my back on the world, and as his wife pass into the Eden of his love and presence…. Now, another gate yawns, and the fiends call me to come down, and if there really be a hell, why then——"