es."

The valet stared in astonishment, but went to obey. It was something
altogether without precedent, this queer proceeding on the part of his
master, and, taken in connection with that other odd event in church,
looked remarkably suspicious.

The night was dark and starless, and the wind blew raw and bleak as the
baronet dashed down the avenue and out into the high-road. He almost
wondered at himself for complying with the dying woman's desire, but
some inward impulse beyond his control seemed driving him on.

He rode rapidly, and a quarter of an hour brought him to the sexton's
cottage. A feeble light glimmered from the window out into the
blackness of the night. A moment later and he stood within, in the
presence of the dying.

The Reverend Cyrus Green sat by the table, a Bible in his hand.
Kneeling by the bedside, her face ghastly white, her burning black eyes
dry and tearless, was the young woman. And like a dead woman already,
stretched on the bed, lay Zenith.

But she was not dead. At the sound of the opening door, at the sound
of his entrance, she opened her eyes, dulling fast in death, and fixed
them on Sir Jasper.

"I knew you would come," she said, in a husky whisper. "You dare not
stay away! The spirit of the dying Zenith drove you here in spite of
yourself. Come nearer--nearer! Sir Jasper Kingsland, don't hover
aloof. Once you could never be near enough. Ah, I was young and fair
then! I'm old and ugly now. Come nearer, for I can not speak aloud,
and listen. Do you know why I have sent for you?"

He had approached the bedside. She caught his hand and held it in a
vise-like clutch.

"No," he said, recoiling.

"To give you my dying malediction--to curse you with my latest breath!
I hate you, Sir Jasper Kingsland, falsest of all mankind! and if the
dead can return and torment the living, then do you beware of me!"

She spoke in panting gasps, the death-rattle sounding in her skinny
throat. Shocked and scandalized, the rector interposed:

"My good woman, don't--for pity's sake, don't say such horrible things!"

But she never heeded him.

"I hate you!" she said, with a last effort. "I die hating you, and I
curse you with a dying woman's curse! May your life be a life of
torment and misery and remorse! May your son's life be blighted and
ruined! May he become an outcast among men! May sin and shame follow
him forever, and all of his abhorred race!"

Her voice died away.