She clasped Mildred tightly, trembled convulsively a moment, and then her arms fell back, and she was as still as poor Belle had been.

“Oh, mamma!” Mildred almost shrieked, but she was far beyond recall, and the suffering heart was at rest.

When the woman returned with the cup of tea she had gone to prepare for Mrs. Jocelyn, she found the young girl leaning forward unconscious on the bosom of the dead mother.

When she revived it was only to moan and wring her hands in despair.  Mrs. Wheaton soon appeared, and having learned what had happened she threw her apron over her head and rocked back and forth in her strong sympathetic grief.  But her good heart was not long content with tears, and she took Mildred into her arms and said: 

“I vill be a mother to you, and you shall never vant a ’ome vile I ’ave von,” and the motherless girl clung to her in a way that did the kind soul a world of good.

Before the evening was very far advanced a boy brought a note to the door.  Mildred seized it and asked: 

“Who gave it to you?”

“I don’t know—­a man.  He pointed to this door, and then he went away very fast.”

She tore it open, and read in horror:  “My darling wife, dear beyond all words in these my final despairing moments.  My love for you and those left is the only trace of good remaining in my heart.  I die for your sakes.  My continued existence would be a curse, for I have lost my manhood.  I am possessed by a devil that I can’t control.  I cannot ask you to forgive me.  I can never forgive myself.  Farewell.  After I am gone, brighter days will come to you all.  Pity me if you can, forgive me if you can, and remember me as I was before—­“And there the terrible missive ended.

For an hour the girl lay moaning as if in mortal pain, and then the physician who was summoned gave her a sedative which made her sleep long and heavily.  It was quite late in the morning when she awoke, and the events that had passed first came to her like a horrid dream, and then grew into terrible reality.  But she was not left to meet the emergency alone, for Mrs. Wheaton and Clara Wilson watched beside her.  The latter in her strong sympathy had come to the city to take Mildred and her mother to the country, and she said to Mrs. Wheaton that she would now never leave her friend until she was in the breezy farm-house.

After a natural outburst of grief Mildred again proved that Arnold’s estimate of her was correct.  She was equal to even this emergency, for she eventually grew quiet and resolute.  “I must find papa,” she said.

“Shall I?” Mrs. Wilson asked Mrs. Wheaton significantly.

“Yes, Millie is more hof a soldier than hany hof us.”

“Well,” continued Mrs. Wilson, “Mrs. Wheaton found this in the morning paper:  ’An unknown man committed suicide on the steps of No. 73——­Street.  His remains have been taken to the Morgue for identification.’”