, torturing fiends recalled all the
harsh words she had used to pain this defenceless being,--all the cruel
wrong she had done her,--all the misery she had caused her; and now she
inwardly prayed that Madeleine might live; but with that prayer arose
the thought that the supplication of such a one as she would remain
unheard in heaven.

Mrs. Lawkins, aided by Maurice, was applying restoratives. With his arm
beneath Madeleine's head, he was holding a spoon to her lips, and, with
gentle force, pouring its contents into her mouth, watching her with the
most thrilling anxiety. He thought a slight movement of the lips was
perceptible; then they quivered more certainly, and she made an effort
to swallow.

The countess was the first one that spoke: "She is not dead! I am spared
that!"

She sank back upon her pillow and wept.

No one present had ever seen her weep; but now she did not try to hide
her tears; they gushed forth in fierce torrents, like a stream that
breaks forth through severed icebergs; for in her soul the ice that had
gathered to mountain heights was melting at last.

Maurice had echoed the words, "She is not dead," pressing his own
burning lips upon those pale, feebly-stirring, cold ones, and catching
the first returning breath that Madeleine drew. At that long, fervent
kiss her eyes unclosed; they saw his face and nothing beside.

"Madeleine, my beloved, you are spared to me! My life returns now that
you are given back."

Madeleine faintly murmured "Maurice," and then her eyes wandered from
his face to those around her, and she added, "What is it?"

Bertha's transition from grief to joy was so clamorous that no one could
answer. If Gaston had not restrained her, Madeleine's bandage would have
been endangered by the young girl's vehement embraces, which were
mingled with incoherent exclamations of rapture.

"What is it?" again questioned Madeleine; but, as she spoke her eye
caught sight of the fallen curtain, thrown in a heap, and remembering
the recent danger, she turned quickly to the countess, and said,
feebly,--

"You are not hurt, aunt,--madame? The shaft did not strike you,--did
it?"

The countess felt that a shaft had fallen and struck her, indeed, but
not the one Madeleine meant. She stretched out her hand and clasped that
of her niece as she said,--

"I am uninjured, Madeleine; it is you who received the blow. God grant
that this may be the last that will fall upon you through me! It is