e bed gets wrong. Pull me up on the
pillow, will you Madame Vine?"

Mr. Carlyle gently lifted the boy himself.

"Madame Vine is an untiring nurse to you, William," he observed,
gratefully casting a glance toward her in the distance, where she had
retreated, and was shaded by the window curtain.

William made no reply; he seemed to be trying to recall something. "I
forget! I forget!"

"Forget what?" asked Mr. Carlyle.

"It was something I wanted to ask you, or to tell you. Isn't Lucy come
home?"

"I suppose not."

"Papa, I want Joyce."

"I will send her home to you. I am going for your mamma after dinner."

"For mamma?--oh, I remember now. Papa, how shall I know mamma in Heaven?
Not this mamma."

Mr. Carlyle did not immediately reply. The question may have puzzled
him. William continued hastily; possibly mistaking the motive of the
silence.

"She _will_ be in Heaven, you know."

"Yes, yes, child," speaking hurriedly.

"Madame Vine knows she will. She saw her abroad; and mamma told her
that--what was it, madame?"

Madame Vine grew sick with alarm. Mr. Carlyle turned his eyes upon
her scarlet face--as much as he could get to see of it. She would have
escaped from the room if she could.

"Mamma was more sorry than she could bear," went on William, finding he
was not helped. "She wanted you, papa, and she wanted us, and her heart
broke, and she died."

A flush rose to Mr. Carlyle's brow. He turned inquiringly to Madame
Vine.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir," she murmured, with desperate energy. "I
ought not to have spoken; I ought not to have interfered in your family
affairs. I spoke only as I thought it must be, sir. The boy seemed
troubled about his mother."

Mr. Carlyle was at sea. "Did you meet his mother abroad? I scarcely
understand."

She lifted her hand and covered her glowing face. "No, sir." Surely the
recording angel blotted out the words! If ever a prayer for forgiveness
went up from an aching heart, it must have gone up then, for the
equivocation over her child's death-bed!

Mr. Carlyle went toward her. "Do you perceive the change in his
countenance?" he whispered.

"Yes, sir. He has looked like this since a strange fit of trembling that
came on in the afternoon. Wilson thought he might be taken for death. I
fear that some four and twenty hours will end it."

Mr. Carlyle rested his elbow on the window frame, and his hand upon his
brow, his drooping eyelids falling over his eyes. "It