back on me. Sometimes I don't feel it at all. And it is only the last of
many friends to desert me----"

There were four pages of this, growing more and more incoherent, and
then at the last, the writer went on, his writing suddenly larger and
more distinct, as if he had taken pains to render it legible:

"I am going to die, Brigit, so good-bye. If you would have married me I
should not have done this. It is all your fault. "Gerald Carron."

For an instant her indignation at the incredible cowardice of the man
crushed every other feeling. Then a thrill of horror came over her.
Looking again at the last page she saw below the signature:

"If you will come to see me at five o'clock to-morrow, and are kind to
me, I won't do it."

Returning to her mother's room the girl handed her the letter. "Read the
last page," she said briefly.

Lady Kingsmead shuddered. "We must wire him. We'll tell him to come down
here--he must be mad--I--oh, Brigit!"

Brigit shook her head. "Of course he's mad. But we must go to him. We'll
wire from the station."

Hurrying her distracted mother to the train, the girl settled into a
corner and remained in unbroken silence until they reached town.

"It is odious, disgusting of him," she broke out in the hansom as they
went up St. James Street. "When he is quieted down, mother, you must
make him understand that I absolutely refuse to accept the
responsibility of his deeds. I never could bear him."

Lady Kingsmead nodded. "It is the morphine he takes. He must go into
one of these great cure places--or no, that is for drinking, I
believe----"

They had reached the house and gone up the stairs before she spoke
again. "I hope he won't be violent," she declared, "I wish you hadn't
insisted on coming. A wire would have done every bit as well----"

No one answering the ring, Brigit tried the door on which a card bearing
Carron's name was neatly tacked.

To her surprise the door was open, and crossing the little ante-chamber
the two women went into the sitting-room.

Lying on his face by the fireplace, in which red ashes still glowed,
Gerald Carron lay dead, a revolver near him, his face in a small pool of
blood.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lady Kingsmead fainted dead away for once in her life, dropping in a
huddled heap near the man she had loved and unloved.

Brigit stared at them for a moment, wondering vaguely which of them was
dead, which only fainting. Then, just as she was