"You are leaving your luck, Missy darling," said she.
"Ay--that I am," said Zillah, bitterly.
"But you will put it on, Missy," pleaded the ayah. "Sahib has talked so much about it."
Zillah stopped. The ayah threw it over her, and enveloped her in its soft folds.
"It was your mother's veil, Missy," she added. "Give me a kiss for her sake before you go."
Zillah flung her arms around the old woman's neck.
"Hush, hush!" she said. "Do not make me give way again, or I can never do it."
At the foot of the stairs Guy was waiting, and they entered the room solemnly together--these two victims--each summoning up all that Honor and Duty might supply to assist in what each felt to be a sacrifice of all life and happiness. But to Zillah the sacrifice was worse, the task was harder, and the ordeal more dreadful. For it was her father, not Guy's, who lay there, with a face that already seemed to have the touch of death; it was she who felt to its fullest extent the ghastliness of this hideous mockery.
But the General, whose eyes were turned eagerly toward the door, found in this scene nothing but joy. In his frenzy he regarded them as blessed and happy, and felt this to be the full realization of his highest hopes.
"Ah!" he said, with a long gasp; "here she is at last. Let us begin at once."