Her maid saw nothing more to-night than she had seen on any other night of her service.  Her mistress, if not quite so sweet to her as to Mrs. Birkett, say, or the rector, was yet fairly amiable as mistresses go, and to-night was neither better nor worse than ordinary.  Her attendance went on in the usual routine, with nothing to remark, bad or good; and then madame laid her fair head on the pillow, and took a tablespoonful of her calmant to check the palpitation that had come on, and to still her nerves, which that last look backward had somewhat disturbed.

How beautiful she looked!  Fair and lovely as she had always been to the eyes of Sebastian Dundas, never had she looked so grand as now.  Her yellow hair was lying spread out on the pillow like a glory:  one white arm was flung above her head, the other hung down from the bed.  Her pale face, with her mouth half open as if in a smile at the happy things she dreamt, peaceful and pure as a saint’s, seemed to him the very embodiment of all womanly truth and sweetness.  He leaned over her with a yearning rapture that was almost ecstasy.  This noble, loving woman was his own, his life, his future.  No more dark moods of despair, no more angry passions, disappointment and remorse; all was to be cloudless sunshine, infinite delight, unending peace and love.

“My darling, oh my love!” he said tenderly, laying his hand on her glossy golden hair and kissing her.  “Virginie, give me one word of love on your first night at home.”

She was silent.  Was her sleep so deep that even love could not awake her?  He kissed her again and raised her head on his arm.  It fell back without power, and then he saw that the half-opened mouth had a little froth clinging about the lips.

A cry rang through the house—­cry on cry.  The startled servants ran up trembling at they knew not what, to find their master clasping in his arms the fair dead body of his newly-married wife.

“Dead—­she is dead,” they passed in terrified whispers from each to each.

Leam, standing upright in her room, in her clinging white night-dress, her dark hair hanging to her knees, her small brown feet bare above the ankle—­not trembling, but tense, listening, her heart on fire, her whole being as it were pressed together, and concentrated on the one thought, the one purpose—­heard the words passed from lip to lip.  “Dead,” they said—­“dead!”

Lifting up her rapt face and raising her outstretched arms high above her head, with no sense of sin, no consciousness of cruelty, only with the feeling of having done that thing which had been laid on her to do—­of having satisfied and avenged her mother—­she cried aloud in a voice deepened by the pathos of her love, the passion of her deed, into an exultant hymn of sacrifice, “Mamma, are you happy now?  Mamma! mamma! leave off crying:  there is no one in your place now.”

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

FAMISHING PORTUGAL.