Morris Pugh's eyes narrowed. "I am sorry; and they can do no good to the child. God has taken him. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. Gwen has to learn her lesson, poor child." "You mean,"--Aura's face had grown a little pale,--"that the child's death is--is a punishment?" "It is done in love--the Lord loveth whom He chasteneth," he replied gently. "And you have told her so?" Something in the girl's tone made him reply on the instant: "She did not need the telling; she knew it already." "She knew it already!" Aura passed him like a flame of fire, and entered the cottage eager with her purely human consolation; but the note of preparation within struck a chill to her very soul. Old Mrs. Evans, Gwen's mother, sat in a black dress with her Bible before her at the receipt of custom. The door between the living-room and the bedroom was half open, and through it, lying on a table covered with a white sheet, was a tiny, still, uncovered form in a white gown. Aura could see the little dimpled hands folded so sedately on the little breast; it sent a great pang through her to think of them so quiet. And Gwen? What of her? "I have brought these lilies," she said almost apologetically to stout Mrs. Evans; "I should like to give them to Gwen, if I may." Mrs. Evans's English being of the smallest, she sighed, rose, and saying "Pliss you, come this way," ushered Aura with her armful of lilies into the bedroom. In the further corner of it, her apron over her face, sat Gwen rocking herself to and fro, and muttering under her breath. She drew down the apron at her mother's touch and quick sentence in Welsh, and so sat staring across the body of the dead baby at Aura. Her face was more vacant than distraught, its pink and white prettiness seeming to hide the tragedy of grief which must surely lie beneath it. "I have brought these," said Aura, laying one of the lilies beside the dead child. With a cry, fierce as a wild animal, Gwen sprang to her feet, snatched at the flower, tore it shred from shred, and flung them to the corners of the room. "Stand back, Englishwoman!" she cried in Welsh, her eyes blazing with sudden, wild, distracted passion. "Leave us alone! We are accursed! accursed! we want no flowers here." Then she clung to her mother and wailed, "Oh! mother, take it away--take the child away--I do not want it; it is accursed. God has taken it away, and it must go. Let her take it if she wants it; take it away and bury it out of sight. I must forget my sin--my sin--my sin! _Beth n'ai! Beth n'ail Gwae fi! beth n'ai!_" The mingled sobbing of the two women, roused in an instant to the very highest pitch of unrestrained emotion, smote on Aura's ears turning her to veritable stone. She understood enough to grasp the drift of what she heard, and with a quick pulse of pity for the quiet rest thus rudely disturbed, she bent and kissed the clay-cold child, then turned without a word and left the room. Not to be long alone, however.