They looked at her in utter wonder. In the same faint voice she continued:
"I am dead to my home—I shall never see it again, and to my friends—I shall never see them again. I am dead to all the hopes that once made earth like heaven for me."
Her voice died away in a faint, moaning sob, and there was silence—silence that was broken at last by the clear, deep voice of the doctor.
"Will you tell us why this is?" he asked.
"I cannot," she replied, "I can only trust to your mercy. I cannot tell you either my name or my station, or what has slain me, when life was most sweet."
"Did you do something very wrong?" asked Mrs. Chalmers, with a shadow on her kindly face.
Hyacinth raised her beautiful eyes to the drifting clouds, which she could see from the window.
"I did something," she replied—"but, no—I don't think it was so very wrong; hundreds do it, and never think it wrong at all. I only planned it; a fear that it might be wrong came over me, and I did not do it. But the consequences of even the little I did—the shadow as it were of a sin—fell over me, and my whole life is darkened."
"You can tell us no more?" said the doctor.
"No!" she replied; mournfully; "I throw myself on your mercy."