“Did you know?” said Krauss, appealing to Sophy, who stood at the other side of the bed.  The words came in short savage jerks.

“Yes,” she replied, “I only discovered it six weeks ago.”

“And never told me!” glaring at her with a furious expression.

“No—­because Aunt Flora implored me to be silent.  I was doing my best to stop it and minimising the doses.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the doctor, “that accounts for this.  She has been starved and, with the cunning of these morphia maniacs, found means to get a supply, and has absorbed an enormous quantity.”

“Ach Gott! it seems incredible,” moaned Krauss, now rising and coming towards the bed, and lifting his wife’s limp hand.  “What could have made her take to it?”

“Illness—­loneliness—­depression; this enervating climate; having nothing particular to do; an idle woman of forty has no business in Burma.”

“But surely you have some remedy?—­something that will bring her to?  Gott in Himmel! you don’t tell me that she will never see me, or speak to me again!”

“No; cocaine is one of the most powerful drugs—­the greatest curse in our pharmacopoeia.  It is better that she should go like this.  Even if she were to survive for a week, she would be a mere inanimate shadow.”

“Oh, my poor Flora, my heart’s joy!  You must not go; you shall not leave me without one word!” And Herr Krauss tumbled down upon his knees and sobbed stertorously.

The doctor, who was surveying him with frigid amazement, suddenly turned and, seizing Sophy by the arm, said: 

“You can do no good here now; this is no place for you.”

Leading her to the door he closed it inexorably behind her.

Half an hour later she was joined by Lily, her round face wet with tears.

“All is over now, Miss Sahib.  My missis always so good to me—­my missis done die.”

CHAPTER XXXV

MUNG BAW LIES LOW

In some mysterious manner the cause of Mrs. Krauss’s death was hushed up; there was no inquest, and the announcement in the Rangoon Gazette merely stated:  “On the 8th inst., Flora, the beloved wife of Herr Karl Krauss, suddenly, of heart failure.”

Sophy had been carried off to the “Barn” a few hours after her aunt had passed away, and never again entered “Heidelberg.”  The funeral was large, expensive, and imposing, and included a crowd of rather unexpected and decidedly shabby mourners, who brought with them offerings of cheap, home-made wreaths and crosses, and wore faces of sincere and unaffected grief.  Strange to say, the grave prepared to receive Mrs. Krauss was next to that in which lay the remains of Richard Roscoe.  The two cocaine victims rested side by side in death, drawn together by the long arm of coincidence.

It had been decided that Sophy was to remain at the “Barn” and accompany Mrs. Gregory when she went home in August.  She quickly recovered her looks and spirits amid bright society and cheerful surroundings.  There had been an auction at “Heidelberg,” everything was disposed of; the accumulation of twelve years was scattered to the winds, the servants were disbanded, and the house was closed.