"Had you loved the boy," said Amy, "you would not have crushed the mother's heart. What had I done to you, Frances Strickland, that you should pursue me so cruelly, first as a girl, when I never injured you, and then--now you have taken my husband's love from me, and would take my boy's also? But I will stand between him and you, cruel girl, as long as I live." "Don't say so. Think--think--what if he should die?" said Frances, fearfully. "Ah! God help me!" said Amy; she could say no more. But Frances clung to her dress. "It is I who should say, God help me!" she cried; "don't you know I took Bertie to the cottage where he caught the fever? Oh! Mrs. Vavasour, you don't know half my agony and remorse, or what I suffered when I found out what I had done." "My boy's illness, my husband's scorn, broken hopes, and grieving heart, my crushed spirit, all--all I owe to you. May God forgive you, Miss Strickland." "Yes, yes; God forgive me. I deny nothing. But, oh! will not you forgive me, Mrs. Vavasour? I will try, I will, indeed, to make amends." This abject appeal from the proud Frances? But Amy scarcely heeded it. "You cannot make amends," she said, despairingly. "It is past atonement--this great wrong you have done." "Oh! do not be so harsh and cruel to me; your heart was soft enough once." "It was. You have changed it, and are the first to feel its hardness. I am no longer what I was; but for my boy I should turn into a stone, or die." "And I? What am I to do? If--if anything should happen to Bertie. Oh! I shall go mad," she cried. "Think of my grief then. I, who unwittingly gave him this fever; think what my heart would feel, what it even feels now; and be not so merciless." "No, not half so merciless as your bad heart has been. I can give you no greater punishment than your own guilty remorse, and frightened heart. I will remain no longer, Miss Strickland. You shall not see my boy!" And Amy left Frances weeping, perhaps the first _genuine_ repentant tears she had ever shed. Robert sat at his boy's bed-side all that night, cooling his burning forehead and heated head with the cold wet cloth dipped in vinegar and water, or holding him up in his arms while his poor parched lips feebly yet eagerly drank from the cup his mother held so tremblingly before him, while Frances alternately walked her room despairingly, or crouched away in the dark on the stairs near, her ear vainly trying to catch the words of those mournful watchers and nurses who stepped about so softly in the sick chamber beyond. CHAPTER XII. A FADING FLOWER. "The coldness from my heart is gone, But still the weight is there, And thoughts which I abhor will come, And tempt me to despair. "Those thoughts I constantly repel; And all, methinks, might yet be well, Could I but weep once more; And with true tears of penitence My dreadful state deplore." SOUTHEY.