idents of that early time, asking
herself, was it then, or then, I first saw that she was Sally? She
could recall, without adding another pang to her dull, insensate
suffering, the moment when the baby, as the Major and General Pellew
sat playing chess upon the deck, captured the white king, and sent
him flying into the Mediterranean; and though she could not smile now,
could know how she would have smiled another time. Was that white king
afloat upon the water still? A score of little memories of a like sort
chased one another as her mind ran on, all through the childhood and
girlhood of their subject. And now--it was all to end....

And throughout those years this silent man beside her, this man
she meant to live for still, for all it should be in a darkened
world--this man was ... where? To think of it--in all those years,
no Sally for him! See what she had become to him in so short a
time--such a little hour of life! Think of the waste of it--of
what she might have been! And it was she, the little unconscious
thing herself, that sprang from what had parted them. If she
had to face all the horrors of her life anew for it, would she
flinch from one of them, only to hear that the heart that had
stopped its beating would beat again, that the voice that was
still would sound in her ears once more?

Another hour! The clock gave out its warning that it meant to strike,
in deadly earnest with its long premonitory roll. Then all those
twelve strokes so quick upon the heels of those that sounded but now,
as it seemed. Another hour from the tale of those still left but
reasonable hope; another hour nearer to despair. The reverberations
died away, and left the cold insensate tick to measure out the next
one, while St. Sennans tower gave its answer as before.

"Shall I go now, Gerry, to see?"

"I say not, darling; but go, if you like." He could not bear to hear
it, if it was to be the death-sentence. So Rosalind still sat on to
the ticking of the clock.

Her brain and powers of thought were getting numbed. Trivial things
came out of the bygone times, and drew her into dreams--back into
the past again--to give a moment's spurious peace; then forsook her
treacherously to an awakening, each time deadlier than the last. Each
time to ask anew, what could it all mean? Sally dead or dying--Sally
dead or dying! Each time she repeated the awful words to herself, to
try to get a hold she was not sure she had upon their meaning. Each