The dawn breaks, the brightness of the new day bursts upon a waking world that welcomes it with life. But the brightness of the golden sun shines upon a baby face, that leans white and still and painless now upon its mother's breast, and something that is not the dullness of the morning strikes to her heart, stilling its throbs, stifling its agony of dread. Her child is hers no longer! With gentle touch, with pitying words, her friend strives to draw her from that room. In vain. She kneels beside the little cot where the tiny figure lies so still, so calm now; her tearless eyes riveted on the lovely little face; eyes so wild, so passionate, so entreating, that none dare meet their gaze. "He is only asleep; he has not--left me," she cries: and weeping, they stand aside and know not what to do. Then Lady Etwynde bade them all go out, and knelt down by Lauraine's side. The tears dimmed her eyes, her gentle heart was wrung at the sight of this mute, blank suffering. "Dear, do try and realize it," she whispered tenderly. "It is hard, terribly hard, I know. But for him, doubtless it is best." "Best!" Lauraine rose to her feet, and looked blankly around. The bath, the blankets, the paraphernalia of that brief illness; the sunlight streaming in through the window; the little figure so still, so strangely still, all struck on her with a dull, hopeless pain, as of something missing ... gone out of her life.... Then a low moan broke from her lips. "Oh, God! let me die too!" That awful day of pain and grief rolls on. To Lady Etwynde it seems the most terrible she has ever known. Lauraine has passed from one fit of unconsciousness into another. They watch and tend her in ever-increasing fear. Lady Etwynde has telegraphed to London for a physician, and also to Mrs. Douglas and Sir Francis, though she fears the latter will not receive her message without considerable delay, owing to the uncertainty of his movements. In the darkened house they all move with hushed steps; and in one room, where noise and merriment has been so rife but yesterday, there is _something_ lying white and still, with flowers piled high upon its snowy covering. Something from whose angelic beauty all trace of earth has passed, something in whose presence all grief is stilled, and tears forget to flow. Again and again does Lady Etwynde steal into that room and gaze on the exquisite face on which death has left no shadow of dread, no trace of plain. It seems as if only the mystery of sleep had sealed the marble lids, and left that strange, soft, trance-like calm upon the once restless body.