s, though Dainty tried to husband it
longer; for a fever had seized on her, and she was almost crazed by
thirst, raving now and then deliriously in the darkness, for the tiny
can of oil was exhausted, too, and the blackness of the tomb brooded
over the cell.

She had sobbed till her throat was dry and parched and aching; she had
wept till her tears were all exhausted in their fountains; she was so
weak that she could not stand upright on the floor, and she could only
lie like a stony image of despair on her bed and wait for death.

And she had looked forward so happily to this wretched week--she and
Love. They were to have been upon the ocean now, en route for foreign
lands, so happy in their love that listening angels might have envied
their bliss. Ah, the pity of it, this terrible reality of pain!

At times, when she was not asleep or delirious, her thoughts flew to
Love. She wondered if he were dead yet, and prayed for his spirit to
come and visit her in her loneliness.

So the awful hours dragged by, though Dainty did not know whether they
were days or months, in the bewilderment of her mind. They seemed to her
like endless years; and the time came when she could bear her agony no
longer, when, in burning fever and delirium, she prayed for death, and
recalled her enemy's subtle temptation.

In the black darkness, the weak, white hand groped for the laudanum and
unstoppered it.

"God forgive me!" cried the maddened girl, pressing the bitter draught
to her fever-parched lips.

Then the vial crashed in fragments on the stone floor, and all was
still.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE DARKEST HOUR.

A week had passed since the fatal birthday of Lovelace Ellsworth, and at
the quiet twilight hour he lay among his pillows, a pale, breathing
image of the splendid man whose life had been so cruelly blighted on his
wedding morn.

It was the strangest thing the medical fraternity had ever heard of--how
the young man lingered on with a bullet in his brain; but it was
certain, they said, to have a fatal ending soon. The strange, speechless
stupor in which he had lain for a week would soon close with death.

And meanwhile, his most faithful nurse was Dainty's mother.

The gentle woman had awakened from her drugged sleep directly after the
exciting interview held in her room by Mrs. Ellsworth and her step-son,
and her awakening had indeed been a most cruel one.

The news they had to tell her about Dainty was almost a d