had
found a voice in full choral harmonies on this day; a Christmas of
silent and devout thankfulness for those escaped the shadow of death.

Cecilia Denvil had been hovering on the borderland of feverish
delirium, where all is unreal, for weeks. Since the afternoon when the
carriage-wheels of her mother had passed over her, the present had
been blotted out. She was in her own home once more, she raved of her
father, her pet birds, the garden. When fever consumed her she was in
the foundry, the lava torrent of metal from the furnace mouth creeping
nearer and nearer, threatening to ingulf her. Gradually this tumult of
restless imagery subsided to a great calm. She wandered with San
Donato, the mighty angel, in fields of lilies so vast that they seemed
a sea of bloom. Then she became painfully aware of other shapes that
bent over her, touched her. A man and a woman met at her side and
clasped hands; their faces were vaguely familiar. Rome had vanished,
been obliterated; she only wandered among the lilies, guided by a
glorious angel, his robe rose-colored, with margin of gold, and a palm
branch in his hand. Certainly she must have passed away to another
world.

Henry Denvil, on receipt of that telegram, had left Foundryville by
the first train, overtaken an outward-bound steamer by means of a
small boat, and traversed England and France without delay. Arrived at
the apartment in Rome which bore his wife's name, he was met by her, a
pale, distraught creature, who clung to him with hysterical sobs, and
searched his face with anxious, terrified eyes.

"Is she dead?" he faltered, hoarsely.

"Oh no; but the surgeons think her limbs will be always useless, and
she a cripple."

He soothed, but put her aside to seek his child instead. Augusta
Denvil was conscious, for the first time, of a dull pang of jealousy.
In the long and painful days which ensued Henry Denvil had eyes and
thoughts only for Cecilia, while the latter, by one of those curious
instincts of illness, would accept nothing from another hand after his
arrival.

The mother's ordeal began earlier, and her waning youth had shrivelled
in the anguish she was then compelled to endure. Cecilia, from the
first, had been deaf to her mother's most tender tones, winced and
screamed at the touch of her fingers, even when lying with closed
eyes. Mrs. Denvil, in the awful and solemn watches of the night, read
in this aversion the doom of retribution. Her spirit succumbed i