"Augustina--dear Augustina--give me one look!" cried Laura in despair. She wrapped her arms round her stepmother and laid her head on the poor wasted bosom. But Helbeck possessed himself of one of the girl's hands, and with his own right he made the sign of the Cross upon his sister's brow. "Depart, O Christian soul, from this world, in the name of God the Father Almighty, who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, the son of the living God, who suffered for thee; in the name of the Holy Ghost, who has been poured out upon thee; in the name of the angels and archangels; in the name of the thrones and dominations; in the name of the principalities and powers; in the name of the cherubim and seraphim; in the name of the patriarchs and prophets; in the name of the holy apostles and evangelists; in the name of the holy martyrs and confessors; in the name of the holy monks and hermits; in the name of the holy virgins, and of all the saints of God; let thy place be this day in peace, and thy abode in the Holy Sion; through Christ our Lord. Amen." There was silence, broken only by Laura's sobs and the nurses' weeping. Helbeck alone was quite composed. He gazed at his sister, not with grief--rather with a deep, mysterious joy. When he rose, still looking down upon Augustina, he questioned the nurses in low tones. There had been hardly any warning. Suddenly a stifled cry--a gurgling in the throat--a spasm. Sister Rosa thought she had distinguished the words "Jesus!--" "Alan--" but there had been no time for any message, any farewell. The doctors had once warned the brother that it was possible, though not likely, that the illness would end in this way. "Father Bowles gave her Communion this morning?" said Helbeck, with a grave exactness, like one informing himself of all necessary things. "This morning and yesterday," said Sister Rosa eagerly; "and dear Mrs. Fountain confessed on Saturday." Laura rose from her knees and wrung her hands. "Oh! I can't bear it!" she said to Helbeck. "If I had been there--if we could just have told her! Oh, how strange--how _strange_ it is!" And she looked wildly about her, seized by an emotion, a misery, that Helbeck could not altogether understand. He tried to soothe her, regardless of the presence of the nurses. Laura, too, did not think of them. But when he put his arm round her, she withdrew herself in a restlessness that would not be controlled. "How strange--_how strange_!" she repeated, as she looked down on the little blanched and stiffening face. Helbeck stooped and kissed the brow of the dead woman. "If I had only loved her better!" he said with emotion. Laura stared at him. His words brought back to her a rush of memories--Augustina's old fear of him--those twelve years in which no member of the Fountain household had ever seen Mrs. Fountain's brother. So long as Augustina had been Stephen Fountain's wife, she had been no less dead for Helbeck, her only brother, than she was now.