she asked.

The second demon nodded.

"Then I must escape by the side entrance. When he gets tired waiting,
Mr. Smithers, give him La Sylphine's compliments, and let him go."

She glided past the demons down a dark and winding staircase, and out
into the noisy, lighted street.

The girl paused an instant under a street-lamp--she was only a
girl--fifteen or sixteen at most, though very tall, with a bright,
fearless look--then drawing her shawl closely round her, she flitted
rapidly away.

The innumerable city clocks tolled heavily--eleven. The night was
pitch-dark; the sheet-lightning blazed across the blackness, and now
and then a big drop fell. Still the girl sped on until she reached her
destination.

It was the poorest and vilest quarter of the great city--among reeking
smells, and horrible sounds, and disgusting sights. The house she
entered was tottering to decay--a dreadful den by day and by night,
thronged with the very scum of the London streets. Up and up a long
stair-way she flew, paused at a door on the third landing, opened it,
and went in.

It was a miserable room--all one could have expected from the street
and the house. There was a black grate, one or two broken chairs, a
battered table, and a wretched bed in the corner. On the bed a
woman--the ghastly skeleton of a woman--lay dying.

The entrance of La Sylphine aroused the woman from the stupor into
which she had fallen. She opened her spectral eyes and looked eagerly
around.

"My Sunbeam! is it thou?"

"It is I, mother--at last. I could come no sooner. The ballet was
very long to-night."

"And my Sunbeam was bravoed, and encored, and crowned with flowers, was
she not?"

"Yes, mother; but never mind that. How are you tonight?"

"Dying, my own."

The _danseuse_ fell on her knees with a shrill, sharp cry.

"No, mother--no, no! Not dying! Very ill, very weak, very low, but
not dying. Oh, not dying!"

"Dying, my daughter!" the sick woman said. "I count my life by minutes
now; I heard the city clocks strike eleven; I counted the strokes, for,
my Sunbeam, it is the last hour thy mother will ever hear on earth."

The ballet-dancer covered her face, with a low, despairing cry. The
dying mother, with a painful effort, lifted her own skeleton hand and
removed those of the girl.

"Weep not, but listen, _carissima_. I have much to say to thee before
I go; I feared to die before you came; and even in my grave I could not
re