t. There wasn't no cause for my
lady's fear."

"Is she fainting still?"

"They say she's--dead."

Lord Hartledon pressed onwards, and met Mr. Hillary at the hall-door. The
surgeon took his arm and drew him into an empty room.

"Hillary! is it true?"

"I'm afraid it is."

Lord Hartledon felt his sight failing. For a moment he was a man groping
in the dark. Steadying himself against the wall, he learned the details.

The child's pony had swerved. Ralph could not tell at what, and Lady
Hartledon did not survive to tell. She was looking at him at the time,
and saw him flung under the feet of the other pony, and she rose up in
the carriage with a scream, and then fell back into the seat again. Ralph
jumped out and picked up the child, who was not hurt at all; but when he
hastened to tell her this, he saw that she seemed to have no life in her.
One of the servants, Richard, happened to be going through the Park,
within sight; others soon came up; and whilst Lady Hartledon was being
driven home Richard ran for Mr. Hillary, and then sought his master, whom
he found at the Rectory. The surgeon had found her dead.

"It must have been instantaneous," he observed in low tones as he
concluded these particulars. "One great consolation is, that she was
spared all suffering."

"And its cause?" breathed Lord Hartledon.

"The heart. I don't entertain the least doubt about it."

"You said she had no heart disease. Others said it."

"I said, if she had it, it was not developed. Sudden death from it is not
at all uncommon where disease has never been suspected."

And this was all the conclusion come to in the case of Lady Hartledon.
Examination proved the surgeon's surmise to be correct; and in answer to
a certain question put by Lord Hartledon, he said the death was entirely
irrespective of any trouble, or care, or annoyance she might have had in
the past; irrespective even of any shock, except the shock at the moment
of death, caused by seeing the child thrown. That, and that alone, had
been the fatal cause. Lord Hartledon listened to this, and went away to
his lonely chamber and fell on his knees in devout thankfulness to Heaven
that he was so far innocent.

"If she had not given way to the child!" he bitterly aspirated in the
first moments of sorrow.

That the countess-dowager should come down post-haste and invade
Hartledon, was of course only natural; and Lord Hartledon strove not to
rebel against it. But she made h