"They will never be warm again, Lena," answered Mary, with a sort of smile; "but never mind that now, tell me about yourself. Are you as happy as you expected to be?"
"Oh, Mary," rejoined Helena, trying to suppress her tears, "until I received that miserable telegram my happiness was unalloyed, and I only longed for the time when I could get you to come and stay with me, that you might have the pleasure of seeing what your kindness and affection had done for me; for had you not been all that you were to me, I should never have had the happiness of being Harry's. Mary, you must live to see your own work."
"Lena, how can you talk so! Has not mamma told you that by this time to-morrow I shall no longer be with you?"
"Yes," sobbed Helena; "but while there is life there is hope--and I _will_ hope."
"You _must_ not, Lena, for there is none; this is the second since----" a spasm caught her breath, but she went on, although her voice was evidently getting weak--"since that evening when you found me half fainting by the stone bench."
"Mary," cried Helena, almost angrily, "you have treated me shamefully in not letting me be told that you had an attack of this kind on the night of my wedding; and I saw by mamma that she blames me bitterly for having left you; she thinks that my doing so increased, even though it did not cause, your illness; and in justice to me, Mary, you ought to have written to me. I could have been with you all these weeks past since Harriet's marriage, and I might have saved you; being in your confidence, I could in some degree have prevented you from brooding over the past until it has killed you. Why have you kept me away from you, sister? But tell me what is all this about the ball, and Mr. Earnscliffe, and Flora Adair? I could not understand anything from mamma's account of it."
"You remember the first time in Rome that you spoke of those two names together,--I said then that I would rather see him dead than loving and beloved by her; then in Naples he spurned my love for her sake, and I swore to be revenged; and I have been!"
"Mary, for God's sake stop!" interrupted Helena, with an expression of horror; "it is too awful to hear the dying speak of revenge!"