She threw her arms around the regal figure, and felt that she was shivering from head to foot.

As she became aware of the close clinging embrace in which Regina held her, a ghastly smile parted Olga’s colourless lips, and she said said in a husky whisper: 

“Is it you?  True little heart; the only one left in all the world.”

After a few seconds, she added: 

“Where is mamma?”

“At the opera.”

“To see Beelzebub?  All the world is singing and playing that now, and you may be sure that you and I shall be in at the final chorus.  Regina——­”

She swept her hand feebly over her forehead, and seemed to forget herself.

Then she rallied, and a sudden spark glowed in her dull eyes, as when a gust stirs an ash heap, and uncovers a dying ember.

“Erle Palma?”

“Has gone to Washington.”

“May he never come back!  O God! a hundred deaths would not satisfy me!  A hundred graves were not sufficient to hide him from my sight!”

She groaned and clasped her hand across her eyes.

“What dreadful thing has occurred?  Tell me, you know that you can trust me.”

“Trust! no, no; not even the archangels that fan the throne of God.  I have done with trust.  Take me in your room a little while.  Hide me from mamma until to-morrow; then it will make no difference who sees me.”

Regina led her to the low rocking chair in her own room, and took off the common shawl and bonnet which she had used as a disguise, then seized her cold nerveless hand.

“Do tell me your great sorrow.”

“Something rare nowaday.  I had a heart, a live, warm, loving heart, and it is broken; dead—­utterly dead.  Regina, I was so happy yesterday.  Oh!  I stood at the very gate of heaven, so close that all the glory and the sweetness blew upon me, like June breezes over a rose hedge; and the angels seemed to beckon me in.  I went to meet Belmont, to join him for ever, to turn my back on the world, and as his wife pass into the Eden of his love and presence....  Now, another gate yawns, and the fiends call me to come down, and if there really be a hell, why then——­”

For nearly a moment she remained silent.

“Olga, is he ill?  Is he dead?”

A cry as of one indeed broken-hearted came from her quivering lips, and she clasped her arms over her head.

“Oh, if he were indeed dead!  If I could have seen him and kissed him in his coffin!  And known that he was still mine, all mine, even in the grave——­”

Her head sank upon her bosom, and after a brief pause she resumed in an unnaturally calm voice.

“My world so lovely yesterday has gone to pieces; and for me life is a black crumbling ruin.  I hung all my hopes, my prayers, my fondest dreams on one shining silver thread of trust, and it snapped, and all fall together.  We ask for fish, and are stung by scorpions; we pray for bread—­only bare bread for famishing hearts—­and we are stoned.  Ah! it appears only a hideous dream; but I know it is awfully, horribly true.”