In compliance with Lionel's prayer, Lady Helena took him into the sick room where Lillian lay. She did not know him; the gentle, tender eyes were full of dread and fear; the fair, pure face was burning with the flush of fever; the hot, dry lips were never still. She talked incessantly--at times of Knutsford and Beatrice--then prayed in her sweet, sad voice that Lionel would trust her--only trust her; when Beatrice was married she would tell him all. He turned away; her eyes had lingered on his face, but no gleam of recognition came into them. "You do not think she will die?" he asked of Lady Helena; and she never forgot his voice or his manner. "We hope not," she said; "life and death are in higher hands than ours. If you wish to help her, pray for her." In after years Lionel Dacre like to remember that the best and most fervent prayers of his life had been offered for gentle, innocent Lillian Earle. As he turned to quit the chamber he heard her crying for her mother. She wanted her mother--why was she not there? He looked at Lady Helena; she understood him. "I have written," she said. "I sent for Dora yesterday; she will be here soon." Chapter XLIII On the second day succeeding that on which Dora had been sent for, Beatrice Earle was to be laid in her grave. The servants of the household, who had dearly loved their beautiful young mistress, had taken their last look at her face. Lady Helena had shed her last tears over it. Lord Airlie had asked to be alone for a time with his dead love. They had humored him, and for three long hours he had knelt by her, bidding her a sorrowful farewell, taking his last look at the face that would never again smile on earth for him. They respected the bitterness of his uncontrollable sorrow; no idle words of sympathy were offered to him; men passed him by with an averted face--women with tearful eyes. Lord Earle was alone with his dead child. In a little while nothing would remain of his beautiful, brilliant daughter but a memory and a name. He did not weep; his sorrow lay too deep for tears. In his heart he was asking pardon for the sins and follies of his youth; his face was buried in his hands, his head bowed over the silent form of his loved child; and when the door opened gently, he never raised his eyes--he was only conscious that some one entered the room, and walked swiftly up the gloomy, darkened chamber to the bedside. Then a passionate wailing that chilled his very blood filled the rooms. "My Beatrice, my darling! Why could I not have died for you?" Some one bent over the quiet figure, clasping it in tender arms, calling with a thousand loving words upon the dear one who lay there--some one whose voice fell like a strain of long-forgotten music upon his ears. Who but a mother could weep as she did? Who but a mother forget everything else in the abandonment of her sorrow, and remember only the dead?