son, I must leave you at last!"

The boy stifled a sob as he bent and kissed the ice-cold face. Young
as he was, he had the gravity and self-repression of manhood already.

"I have loved you better than my own life," the faint, whispering voice
went on. "I would have died to save you an hour of pain. I have kept
the one secret of my life well--a secret that has blighted it before
its time--but I can not face the dread unknown and bear my secret with
me. On my death-bed I must tell all, and my darling boy must bear the
blow."

Everard Kingsland listened to his father's huskily murmured words in
boyish wonderment. What secret was he talking of? He glanced across
at his mother, and saw her pale cheeks suddenly flushed and her calm
eyes kindling.

"No living soul has ever heard from me what I must tell you to-night,
my Everard--not even your mother. Do not leave me, Olivia. You, too,
must know all that you may guard your son--that you may pity and
forgive me. Perhaps I have erred in keeping any secret from you, but
the truth was too horrible to tell. There have been times when the
thought of it nearly drove me mad. How, then, could I tell the wife I
loved--the son I idolized--this cruel and shameful thing?"

The youthful Everard looked simply bewildered--Lady Kingsland excited,
expectant, flushed.

She gently wiped the clammy brow and held a reviving cordial to the
livid lips.

"My dearest, do not agitate yourself," she said. "We will listen to
all you have to say, and love you none the less, let it be what it
will."

"My own dear wife! half the secret you know already. You remember the
astrologer--the prediction?"

"Surely. You have never been the same man since that fatal night. It
is of the prediction you would speak?"

"It is. I must tell my son. I must warn him of the unutterable horror
to come. Oh, my boy! my boy! what will become of you when you learn
your horrible doom?"

"Papa," the lad said, softly, but growing very white, "I don't
understand--what horror? what doom? Tell me, and see how I will bear
it. I am a Kingsland, you know, and the son of a daring race."

"That is my brave boy! Send them out of the room, Olivia--priest,
doctor, Mildred, and all--then come close to me, close, close, for my
voice is failing--and listen."

Lady Kingsland arose--fair and stately still as twelve years before,
and eminently self-sustained in this trying hour. In half a minute she
had turned