“How good you are! Oh! you are an angel! But, no, I have no one in the whole world belonging to me, that I know of, except my grandmother, old Madam Arbuthnot, of Arbuthnot, in Scotland; and she never saw me, nor I her. She must be over seventy years old now.” “How is it that you never saw her?” “Oh, she cast my mother off for marrying an actor. My mother was her only child, and she cast her off for marrying my father, who was a play actor, because, you see, she was not only of a very high family, and very proud of her descent, but she was a member of the Church of Scotland, and very strict in her religion.” “Ah!” said Roma, revolving some curious questions in her own mind, but giving them no utterance. “My father and mother both fell into poverty, somehow or other, I never knew how, and from the time I was seven years old, and learned to dance on the stage, supported them until they died, when I was sixteen; then I went to Paris, and danced for myself until I married.” “There, do not talk any more just at present. You are tired,” said Roma; and she went and brought the invalid a glass of milk punch, which the latter drank with the avidity with which she took all nourishment. A few days later Roma obtained from her protégée the full address of Madam Arbuthnot, to be used in case of necessity. It was: “Madame Griselda Margaret Arbuthnot, Arbuthnot Castle, Killharrt, Caithness, Scotland.” Another severely cold spell, with high winds and driving snow. Marguerite grew much worse. She could no longer lie down, or even recline, but sat straight up in her chair, propped and supported on all sides. She suffered extremely from oppression, fever and suffocation, but still her spirits never fell. She never thought of death. She spoke, when she was able to speak, only of getting well and of going to the country. One bright morning, near the end of March, she had her chair wheeled to the windows, where she could look out and see the piece of woods behind the house, and watch the first softening and swelling of the twigs of the trees before they began to burst into leaflets. “Oh, how I shall enjoy the country!” she said, and then a terrible fit of coughing seized her. Roma hurried to her side, and not a minute too soon. The red stream of blood burst from her lips and poured into the bowl that the lady held, until the pale sufferer sank back again on her chair, murmuring faintly: “Oh!—that—was—such—relief. I am—ever—so much—better now”—and died. It was so sudden at the last—so awfully sudden—that even strong Roma was stupefied by the event, and could not realize it. She set the sanguine bowl on the table and gazed at the dead form. She was aroused by the low voice of Owlet, saying: “Mamma is better now. She is always better after one of these. It is bad to look at, but it makes her better; she always says so. She is better, really, now, is she not?” pleaded the child, looking in doubt at the changed features of her mother.