ted him coming to-day, but I
knew it was his last day with the portrait, and that all should end
here."

"We have done wrong in this--the poor child! Besides, she has, I fear,
another sorrow coming. It showed itself to me to-day for the first
time." Then she whispered to him, and he started and sighed, and said at
last:

"But it must be saved. By--! it shall be saved!" And at that moment
Marie Wyndham was standing in the open window of the library of Pascal
House. She had been thinking of her recent visit to the King's Cave,
where she had left food, and of the fact that Carbourd was not there.
She raised her face towards the moon and sighed. She was thinking of
something else. She was not merely sentimental, for she said, as if she
had heard the words of the Governor and Madame Solde: "Oh! if it could
be saved!"

There was a rustle in the shrubbery near her. She turned towards the
sound. A man came quickly towards her. "I am Carbourd," he said; "I
could not find the way to the Cave. They were after me. They have
tracked me. Tell me quick how to go."

She swiftly gave him directions, and he darted away. Again there was a
rustle in the leaves, and a man stepped forth. Something glistened in
his hands--a rifle, though she could not see it plainly. It was levelled
at the flying figure of Carbourd. There was a report. Marie started
forward with her hands on her temples and a sharp cry. She started
forward--into absolute darkness. There was a man's footsteps going
swiftly by her. Why was it so dark? She stretched out her hands with a
moan.

"Oh! mother!--oh! mother! I am blind!" she cried.

But her mother was sleeping unresponsive beyond the dark-beyond all
dark. It was, perhaps, natural that she should cry to the dead and not
to the living.

Marie was blind. She had known it was coming, and it had tried her, as
it would have tried any of the race of women. She had, when she needed
it most, put love from her, and would not let her own heart speak, even
to herself. She had sought to help one who loved her, and to fully prove
the other--though the proving, she knew, was not necessary--before the
darkness came. But here it was suddenly sent upon her by the shock of
a rifle shot. It would have sent a shudder to a stronger heart than
hers--that, in reply to her call on her dead mother, there came from the
trees the shrill laugh of the mopoke--the sardonic bird of the South.

As she stood there, with this tragedy envelop