“Here, papa!”

“My boy! my boy! whom I have loved so well—­whom I have shielded so tenderly.  My precious, only son, I must leave you at last!”

The boy stifled a sob as he bent and kissed the ice-cold face.  Young as he was, he had the gravity and self-repression of manhood already.

“I have loved you better than my own life,” the faint, whispering voice went on.  “I would have died to save you an hour of pain.  I have kept the one secret of my life well—­a secret that has blighted it before its time—­but I can not face the dread unknown and bear my secret with me.  On my death-bed I must tell all, and my darling boy must bear the blow.”

Everard Kingsland listened to his father’s huskily murmured words in boyish wonderment.  What secret was he talking of?  He glanced across at his mother, and saw her pale cheeks suddenly flushed and her calm eyes kindling.

“No living soul has ever heard from me what I must tell you to-night, my Everard—­not even your mother.  Do not leave me, Olivia.  You, too, must know all that you may guard your son—­that you may pity and forgive me.  Perhaps I have erred in keeping any secret from you, but the truth was too horrible to tell.  There have been times when the thought of it nearly drove me mad.  How, then, could I tell the wife I loved—­the son I idolized—­this cruel and shameful thing?”

The youthful Everard looked simply bewildered—­Lady Kingsland excited, expectant, flushed.

She gently wiped the clammy brow and held a reviving cordial to the livid lips.

“My dearest, do not agitate yourself,” she said.  “We will listen to all you have to say, and love you none the less, let it be what it will.”

“My own dear wife! half the secret you know already.  You remember the astrologer—­the prediction?”

“Surely.  You have never been the same man since that fatal night.  It is of the prediction you would speak?”

“It is.  I must tell my son.  I must warn him of the unutterable horror to come.  Oh, my boy! my boy! what will become of you when you learn your horrible doom?”

“Papa,” the lad said, softly, but growing very white, “I don’t understand—­what horror? what doom?  Tell me, and see how I will bear it.  I am a Kingsland, you know, and the son of a daring race.”

“That is my brave boy!  Send them out of the room, Olivia—­priest, doctor, Mildred, and all—­then come close to me, close, close, for my voice is failing—­and listen.”

Lady Kingsland arose—­fair and stately still as twelve years before, and eminently self-sustained in this trying hour.  In half a minute she had turned out rector, physician, and daughter, and knelt again by that bed of death.