There she drooped, with wild, grief-darkened eyes fastened on the boy, her fair cheeks white with horror, her shapely hands clasped in anguish; her snaky tresses lying low upon her sloping shoulders—a vision of surpassing grace and dumb sorrow—Madam Estvan.
How came she there? Where came she from, who had lain entombed in a holocaust of flame?
A spirit, was she? Ay, truly, a spirit of pity and grief, weeping over a brave boy-soldier's end.
"God bless you, madam!" burst from St. Udo's lips.
She turned her tranced eye from its shocked scrutiny of the boy, and lifted it in mute anguish to the colonel's. She did not recognize him in that supreme moment of her woe.
"Is he dying, do you think?" whispered she, pressing close.
The sweet face turned with a smile of anguish at her voice, the dark eyes opened on her lovely countenance with a far away look already in their depths.
"Yes, yes, madam, I am dying," murmured the boy.
"Oh, Edgar! Edgar!" moaned the woman, in harrowing tones, "must you go? I loved you so dearly, too—my last, my only hope on earth or in Heaven—my son!"
"Ah, madam, you did not treat me as your son."