"It is I, mother—at last. I could come no sooner. The ballet was very long to-night."
"And my Sunbeam was bravoed, and encored, and crowned with flowers, was she not?"
"Yes, mother; but never mind that. How are you tonight?"
"Dying, my own."
The danseuse fell on her knees with a shrill, sharp cry.
"No, mother—no, no! Not dying! Very ill, very weak, very low, but not dying. Oh, not dying!"
"Dying, my daughter!" the sick woman said. "I count my life by minutes now; I heard the city clocks strike eleven; I counted the strokes, for, my Sunbeam, it is the last hour thy mother will ever hear on earth."
The ballet-dancer covered her face, with a low, despairing cry. The dying mother, with a painful effort, lifted her own skeleton hand and removed those of the girl.
"Weep not, but listen, carissima. I have much to say to thee before I go; I feared to die before you came; and even in my grave I could not rest with the words I must say unsaid. I have a legacy to leave thee, my daughter."
"A legacy?"