She waved the lamp above her head.
"Kitty! for God's sake!" cried Ashe, rushing to her.
"She is mad!" said Lord Parham, standing at the back. "I always knew it!"
The other spectators passed through a second of anguish. The bright figure on the pedestal wavered; one moment, and it seemed as though the lamp must descend crashing upon the head and neck and the white dress beneath it; the next, it had fallen from Kitty's hand—fallen away from her—wide and safe—into the depths of the garden below. A flash of wild light rose from the burning oil and from the dry shrubs amid which it fell. Kitty, meanwhile, swayed—and dropped—heavily—unconscious—into William Ashe's arms.
Kitty barely recovered life and sense during the night that followed. And while she was still unconscious her boy passed away. The poor babe, all ignorant of the straits in which his mother lay, was seized with convulsions in the dawn, and gave up his frail life gathered to his father's breast.
Some ten weeks later, towards the end of October, society knew that the Home Secretary and Lady Kitty had started for Italy—bound first of all for Venice. It was said that Lady Kitty was a wreck, and that it was doubtful whether she would ever recover the sudden and tragic death of her only child.