"Is it Alice he is crying for?" whispered Anne, as Amy moved away, and sent Hannah to take her place by the bed. "No, not Alice. Oh! Anne, he will break my heart. I had so hoped he had forgotten her." Again the little fretful cry sounded. "Tell Missy to come." "I _must_ go," said Amy, "there is no help for it." Frances had thrown herself despairingly on the bed, shutting out Jane, her maid, who had tried to comfort her, and even Mrs. Linchmore. At one moment she would not believe there was no hope--would not,--the next she wept and moaned with the certainty that there could be none; as she saw Amy enter, she covered her face with her hands, and groaned aloud; thinking there was but one reason the mother could have in coming to see her, and that was to upbraid her for having caused the death of her boy. "Miss Strickland I said you should not see my boy, but I cannot refuse his,--" Amy faltered,--"perhaps last request. He is asking for you. Will you come?" "Come!" exclaimed Frances, springing from the bed, and tossing back the hair from off her throbbing temples, "do you think I could refuse him--you, anything? and oh! forgive me, Mrs. Vavasour, for having caused you all this utter misery." "It is a fearful punishment," said Amy, looking at the ravages grief and remorse had made in her beautiful face. "Fearful!" she replied, "it will haunt me through life. Think of that, and say one word of forgiveness, only one." "I cannot forgive you, Miss Strickland. For my poor Bertie's illness I do; that was an unintentional injury, but his mother's misery--broken heart, no; that you might have prevented, and--and, God help me, but I cannot forgive that." "How could I hope you would," said Frances despairingly, as she prepared to follow Amy. "You must control your grief, Miss Strickland; be calm and passionless as of old. My boy must see no tears." "I wonder I have any to shed," she replied, "and God knows how I shall bear to see him." Anne looked bewildered as the door opened and Amy returned with Frances, and still more so when she saw the child's face light up with pleasure, and he tried in his feeble way to clasp her neck. "I cannot bear to look at it," said Amy, as she softly left the room. "Naughty! naughty Missy," he said as he kissed her. Frances felt as if she could have died then, without one sigh of regret. For a moment after he released her she did not raise her head. "My dear,--dear Bertie," she said, struggling with her tears. Then presently she sat down and fondled and stroked his thin small hand, soothing and coaxing him as well as she was able. If her heart could have broken, surely it would have broken then.