How stiff it felt! My God! what was the matter? Could he have fainted? She leapt from the bed, and running to her husband’s side, pulled down the bedclothes again and placed her hand upon his heart. The body was cold--cold and still all over! His eyes were glazed and dull. His mouth was slightly open. In one awful moment she knew the truth. Tony was--_dead_! She stood for some moments--some hours--some months--she could not have reckoned the time, silent and motionless, trying to realise what had occurred. Then--as it came upon her, like a resistless flood which she could not stem, nor escape, Harriet gave one fearful shriek which brought the servants hurrying upstairs to know what could be the matter. “I have killed my husband--I have killed him--it was I myself who did it!” was all that she would say. Of course they did not believe her. They accepted the unmeaning words as part of their mistress’s frenzy at her sudden and unexpected loss. They saw what had happened, and they ran breathlessly for a doctor, who confirmed their worst fears--the Signor was dead! The old palazzo became like a disturbed ant-hill. The servants ran hither and thither, unknowing how to act, whilst the mistress sat by the bedside with staring, tearless eyes, holding the hand of her dead husband. But there were a dozen things to be done--half a hundred orders to be issued. Death in Florence is quickly followed by burial. The law does not permit a mourner to lament his Dead for more than four-and-twenty hours. But the signora would give no orders for the funeral nor answer any questions put to her! She had no friends in Florence--for ought they knew, she had no money--what were they to do? At last one of them thought of the neighbouring Convent of the Annunciation and ran to implore one of the good sisters to come to their mistress in her extremity. Shortly afterwards, Sister Angelica entered the bedroom where Harriet sat murmuring at intervals, “It is _I_ who have killed him,” and attempted to administer comfort to the young mourner. But her words and prayers had no effect upon Harriet. Her brain could hold but one idea--she had killed Tony! Doctor Phillips was right--it was she who had killed Margaret Pullen’s baby and Bobby Bates, and to look further back, little Caroline, and now--now, her Tony! the light of her life, the passion of her being, the essence of all her joy--her hope for this world and the next. She had killed him--_she_, who worshipped him, whose pride was bound up in him, who was to have helped him and comforted him and waited on him all his life--she had killed him!