ou have very well disposed, Charles,"
she approved him. "If your father lives, it should not be a difficult
matter--"

She checked suddenly and turned, while Rotherby, too, looked up and
stepped quickly from the window-embrasure where he had stood.

The door of the bedroom had been suddenly pulled open, and Sir James
came out, very pale and discomposed.

"Madam--your ladyship--my lord!" he gasped, his mouth working, his hands
waving foolishly.

The countess rose to confront him, tall, severe and harsh. The viscount
scowled a question. Sir James quailed before them, evidently in
affliction.

"Madam--his lordship," he said, and by his eloquent gesture of dejection
announced what he had some difficulty in putting into words.

She stepped forward, and took him by the wrist. "Is he dying?" she
inquired.

"Have courage, madam," the doctor besought her.

The apparent irrelevancy of the request at such a moment, angered
her. Her mood was dangerously testy. And had the doctor but known it,
sympathy was a thing she had not borne well these many years.

"I asked you was he dying," she reminded him, with a cold sternness that
beat aside all his attempts at subterfuge.

"Your ladyship--he is dead," he faltered, with lowered eyes.

"Dead?" she echoed dully, and her hand went to the region of her heart,
her face turned livid under its rouge. "Dead?" she said again, and
behind her, Rotherby echoed the dread word in a stupor almost equal to
her own. Her lips moved to speak, but no words came. She staggered where
she stood, and put her hand to her brow. Her son's arms were quickly
about her. He supported her to a chair, where she sank as if all her
joints were loosened.

Sir James flew for restoratives; bathed her brow with a dampened
handkerchief; held strong salts to her nostrils, and murmured words
of foolish, banal consolation, whilst Rotherby, in a half-dreaming
condition, stunned by the suddenness of the blow, stood beside her,
mechanically lending his assistance and supporting her.

Gradually she mastered her agitation. It was odd that she should feel so
much at losing what she valued so little. Leastways, it would have been
odd, had it been that. It was not--it was something more. In the awful,
august presence of death, stepped so suddenly into their midst, she felt
herself appalled.

For nigh upon thirty years she had been bound by legal and churchly
ties in a loveless union with Lord Ostermore--married for the