She brought the glasses to the table, gave one to Pamela, and stood watching her while she drank. Then she sat down beside her, and, still holding her own full glass between taper fingers, leant across and said: “Kiss me, my dear, and thank you. When I went back to him after the rehearsal to-day, so full of joy, the woman said he was asleep, and I bent to kiss him, and, oh, his lips were cold! His lips were cold! Yours are warm. I wish I’d known you before. We should have been friends. Nay, ’tis as well! I might have brought misfortune to you as to the others. ’Tis better as it is,” she repeated rather wildly. And when sobbing that her own story was told and that she knew too what a broken heart meant, Pamela would have kissed her again, Felicity pushed her from her, and drank quickly. In the silence that followed, Pamela drew herself physically and mentally together, twisted her handkerchief, patted her curls, wiped her eyes a last time, then, in the tone of one firmly determined on the right course of action: “The coach may go, I’ll not leave you!” she cried. She broke off. Was it the scent of the flowers from the death-chamber, or some curious flavour in the wine? She was all at once aware of a singular, intense smell of almonds in the air. “Miss Falcon, Mrs. Morgan, my dear! Oh, you’re faint, you’re ill, and no wonder!” She clutched the sinking figure, but Fair Fatality had acted her last tragedy. Pamela Pounce never wore the Medusa ring. She dared not; but she kept it all her life. CHAPTER XI IN WHICH THERE IS A PRODIGIOUS SCANDAL ABOUT PINK FLOUNCES None ever knew the share which Pamela had taken in Felicity Falcon’s last night on earth. She had laid the slender figure as decently and respectfully as she could, on a couch, kissed the cold cheek once more, and walked out of the house. Those who would find her in the morning must make what they could of the story. Pamela had her own life and those dependent on her to consider. She could not afford to be mixed up with a scandal. Whether the chapel people to whose ranks the young preacher had belonged, were desirous of hushing up the evidence which might bring discredit upon them, or whether it were really believed that Mrs. Morgan had died of a heart-stroke brought on by grief did not transpire. They were buried together and given a very pious funeral with much preaching and psalm-singing. The event made a profound impression upon Pamela; it revived the cruel emotions of her recent personal experience. She had seen what love meant as never before; she understood its fearful supremacy, and how little anything else mattered beside it in life. There were times when she even envied Felicity Falcon; true, she had loved to desperation and death, but she had loved and been loved with a noble purity and faithfulness!