He had approached the bedside.  She caught his hand and held it in a vise-like clutch.

“No,” he said, recoiling.

“To give you my dying malediction—­to curse you with my latest breath!  I hate you, Sir Jasper Kingsland, falsest of all mankind! and if the dead can return and torment the living, then do you beware of me!”

She spoke in panting gasps, the death-rattle sounding in her skinny throat.  Shocked and scandalized, the rector interposed: 

“My good woman, don’t—­for pity’s sake, don’t say such horrible things!”

But she never heeded him.

“I hate you!” she said, with a last effort.  “I die hating you, and I curse you with a dying woman’s curse!  May your life be a life of torment and misery and remorse!  May your son’s life be blighted and ruined!  May he become an outcast among men!  May sin and shame follow him forever, and all of his abhorred race!”

Her voice died away.  She glared helplessly up from the pillow.  A deep, stern, terrible “Amen!” came from her daughter’s lips; then, with a spasm, she half leaped from the bed, and fell back with a gurgling cry—­dead!

“She is gone!” said the rector, with a shudder.  “Heaven have mercy on her sinful soul!”

The baronet staggered back from the bed.

“I never saw a more horrible sight!” continued the Reverend Cyrus.  “I never heard such horrible words!  No wonder it has unmanned you, Sir Jasper.  Pray sit down and drink this.”

He held out a glass of water.  Sir Jasper seized and drank it, his brain reeling.

With stoical calm, Zara had arisen and closed the dead woman’s eyes, folded the hands, straightened the stiffening limbs, and composed the humble covering.  She had no tears, she uttered no cry—­her face was stern as stone.

“Better stay in this ghastly place no longer, Sir Jasper,” the rector suggested.  “You look completely overcome.  I will see that everything is properly done.  We will bury her to-morrow.”

As a man walks in a dreadful dream, Sir Jasper arose, quitted the room, mounted his horse, and rode away.

One dark, menacing glance Zara shot after him; then she sat stonily down by her dead.  All that night, all next day, Zara kept her post, neither eating, nor drinking, nor sleeping.  Dry and tearless, the burning black eyes fixed themselves on the dead face, and never left it.

When they put the dead woman in the rude board coffin, she offered no resistance.  Calmly she watched them screw the lid down—­calmly she saw them raise it on their shoulders and bear it away.  Without a word or tear she arose, folded her cloak about her, and followed them to the church-yard.

One by one the stragglers departed, and Zara was left alone by the new-made grave.  No, not quite alone, for through the bleak twilight fluttered the tall, dark figure of a man toward her.  She lifted her gloomy eyes and recognized him.