"Now tell it me all again," she said, speaking with effort.
Lotty no longer felt the satisfaction she had experienced that first moment. She was ashamed of her weakness, and told her tale with hesitation and with reserve. While she did so she had ever to look at Doris, who grew momentarily more haggard, and who bent herself twice, thrice; whether in physical or mental pain Lotty did not know. Suppressing a low moan, she drew a small roll of paper from her pocket, and smiled with trembling lips.
"You have avenged yourself on me; now is your turn with him; you owe me this, for you should have spared me this agony. To-morrow morning you go to town and give him this; you yourself must give it to him; I demand it."
Scarcely had Doris uttered these words than she began to moan piteously, and now followed a night during which Lotty was terrified by the sufferings of her young mistress. Constantly she tried to get the key and call the family; Doris would not let her.
"No," she said; "we two must pass this night alone together."
Only when consciousness began to leave her, Lotty succeeded in wrenching the key from her clenched hands. She called up the parents, who arrived but in time to receive their daughter's last breath. She opened her eyes once again, knew her mother, kissed each of her fingertips and whispered—
"Farewell, mother; farewell, forgive me."
Then a last terrible spasm shook her, and when the sun rose she was a corpse. While the parents were with Cara, trying to break the news gently to the poor invalid, Lotty slipped away into her own room. There she unrolled the paper and read—
"Could I have believed in you, I should have lived.—Doris."