Here Christine stopped suddenly and covering her face with her hands sobbed hysterically as she recalled that scene, while Reinette, too, cried as she had never cried before for the dying mother in Rome, who had held her babe to the very last and prayed that God would bless it and have it in his keeping and make it a comfort and a joy to the husband and father, who was far away, joining in a midnight revel where wine, and cards, and women, such as Margaret Ferguson never knew, formed a conspicuous part. “Her baby was a great comfort to her,” Mrs. La Rue said, when she could speak, “and she would have it where she could feel its little hands upon her face, even after blindness came upon her, and she could no longer see. The English physician had been in, and told me she probably would not last the night through, and that I must have some one with me. But she said, ‘No; Christine and baby are all I want,’ and when he was gone she made me sit by her, while she talked, as she had done many a time, of her home over the sea, of her sister, and her mother, to whom she sent messages. I remember her very words. ‘Tell them,’ she said, ‘that I have never ceased to love them, and to long for them with such longing as only homesick creatures know, and if I have seemed neglectful, and have not written as I ought it was because—I couldn’t. I can’t explain, only I love them so much; and now if I could lay my head on mother’s lap, as I did when I was a little girl, and it ached as it is aching now, I should die more willingly. Dear old mother! poor old father! with his hard, brown hands, which have worked so hard for me—God bless them, and comfort them, when they hear I am dead!’” “Oh, Christine!” Reinette sobbed, “grandma ought to know this—she and Aunt Mary, too. They have never heard one word of her last days, for father only wrote that she was dead, and did not even tell them of my birth. I ought to tell my grandmother; she will be so glad to know.” “No, no! oh, no! better not. You said you would not!” Christine exclaimed in terror. “It would lead to so much talk—so many questions about your father, and—Reinette, forgive me—but his record was not the fairest. Even you, his daughter, would not like to see its blackest pages.” Reinette’s face was crimson with shame and resentment, and in her eye was that peculiar gleam which so bewildered and confounded those on whom it fell. The fair structure she had built about her father’s memory was tottering to atoms, but she would struggle bravely to keep it together as long as possible, and she replied: “If there were pages so black in father’s life, do not show them to me, lest I should say you told me falsely. He was my father, and I loved him so dearly. He was kind to me always—and I will stand by him forever. But you have not finished. I want to know just how mother died.”