Bending over the patient he did not notice her words nor the intensity of their tone; and there began to come very quickly a dreadful urgency that caused agony of grief to override the agony of hate that had possessed her. There was a thin, new cry went up in the room: and that was life newly come. And there was heavy breathing with dreadful pause at each expiration's end and then the straining upward climb: and that was life fluttering to be gone. Longer the pauses grew and harsher the upward breath. Loud the thin cry struck in, and as though it called that fleeting life, and as though that fleeting life, in the act of springing away, turned its head at the sound, Audrey opened her eyes. There seemed to be a question in them. Miss Oxford bent closely over her: "A boy, my darling." She seemed to smile before she died. CHAPTER VII ENLISTMENT OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR I That day of Audrey's death was in two minds at two breakfasts in different quarters of London on a morning some while later. In the Mount Street house Jane Lady Burdon, starting in an hour to make her home with her sister in York, was reading to Lord and Lady Burdon a letter just received from India. It was a sympathetic note from the officer who had been with her Roly when he fell. "'His last words,'" she read aloud with faltering lips, "'were: _Tell Gran to love Audrey_. It was difficult to catch them, but I think that was it.'" Jane Lady Burdon laid down the letter and smiled feebly. "They have no meaning for me," she said. And Lord Burdon: "Nellie! What's up, old girl?" Lady Burdon struggled with the dreadful agitation the words had caused her. They had meaning for her. "_I am Audrey--I am Roly's wife._" "So sad," she exclaimed, "so sad--excuse me--I--" She rose shakily and went from the room. After two days of suspense she had thought that hideous alarm defeated and disproved. What now? And what had she done? The other breakfast was at Mrs. Erps's--also immediately before a journey. "No one," Mrs. Erps had said, "no one hadn't oughter travel on a nempty stomach," and had forced Miss Oxford to the table before the start for Little Letham and "Post Offic." "I know you've had bitter trouble as loved the pretty dear meself ever since 'Excoose me,' I says to 'er, 'excoose me,' as I've told yer. An' Gord alone knows I know what trouble is, as 'ad twings of me own pop off in one mumf. But you've got the living for to think of. Same as I 'ad my ole man, you've got this blessed ingfang what never know'd a muvver's breast and took to the bottle like nothing I never did see." And to the blessed "infang" reposing in her arms while she talked: "Didn't yer, yer saucy sossidge? That's what you are, yer know--a saucy sossidge. Ho, yes yer are. No use yer giving answer back ter me, yer know. A saucy, saucy sossidge, wot I should cook up with mashed if I had me way with yer, bless yer."