Her breath was labored. She put her hand once to her throat. Then summoning her strength she went on rapidly. "He was born in lawful wedlock. His father was--a carpenter,--a plain man but an honorable one. He died when Louis was a year old--of pneumonia. We were poor but have always been respectable." "I am very glad to know this." said Margaret, filled with contrition at having forced her to say it. "I hope you will not misunderstand my asking about it. The friends of this lady are more importunate about this thing than she is, and--" "Ask me anything you wish," said the woman in a voice strangely quiet and contained. "I was only distressed for breath a moment ago. I can tell you anything now." "Some other time," said Margaret, rising. She could see that the girl's strength had been overtaxed. "I will go now and see about the little boy's being taken to his new home. And--" the thought of what it must be to the girl to feel that another would take her place rushed over her--"let me promise you for his new mother that she will strive to make him all that you would have him--all that you would have made him had you been spared to him--honorable like his father--pure and true as his mother." "Oh, madam!" the sick girl cried, and caught her dress. "Oh, madam!"-- But Margaret gently disengaged herself and was gone. At the office she stopped a moment to ask some questions about Mrs. Lesseur. "Ah, yes,--poor Rosalie!" the doctor said. She talked longer with him than she intended. It was just a question of time, he said, and not a very long time either. No, it was not tuberculosis, though it seemed something like it. It was a form of Bright's disease. With that malady people sometimes simply faded away. It was probable that she would go that way.... Ah, he was very glad to know that a place had been found for the child. She had worried so about that. As Margaret was stepping into her carriage an attendant came hastily down the steps and spoke to her. "I beg your pardon, madam, but are you not the lady who has been visiting Mrs. Lesseur in Ward Five?" "I am." "The nurse has just been down to say that her patient is very desirous of seeing you a moment before you go,--upon a matter of some moment, I believe." "Very well. I will go back. Rogers, you may wait." At the door of the ward the nurse said to her, "You had scarcely gone, madam, before she seemed in great distress and bade me call you back. I think there was something she had forgotten to say.... Oh, no, it will not hurt her to talk." And again at the little white bed Margaret sat down. The girl had her eyes closed, and her lips moved as if in prayer or preparation for something she had to say. "Rosalie," said Margaret, gently, with a sudden impulse using the girl's first name, "was there something you wanted to say to me?" The girl wrung her hands. "My poor child, what is it? Talk freely to me as you would to a sister."