"Her life depends on how you receive what I am going to tell you.

Should you upbraid her with her misfortune, or fail to stand by her as

only a mother can, I shall not answer for the consequences." Then he

told her Anna's secret.

The stricken woman did not cry out in her anguish, nor swoon away. She

raised a feebly protesting hand, as if to ward off a cruel blow; then

burying her face in her arms, she cowed before him. Not a sob shook

the frail, wasted figure. It was as if this most terrible misfortune

had dried up the well-springs of grief and robbed her of the blessed

gift of tears. The woman who in one brief year had lost everything

that life held dear to her--husband, home, wealth, position--everything

but this one child, could not believe the terrible sentence that had

been pronounced against her. Her Anna--her little girl! Why, she was

only a child! Oh, no, it could not be true. She never, never would

believe it.

Her brain whirled and seemed to stop. It refused to grasp so hideous a

proposition. The doctor was momentarily at a loss to know how to deal

with this terrible dry-eyed grief. The set look in her eyes, the

terrible calm of her demeanor were so much more alarming than the

wildest outpourings of grief would, have been.

"And this seizure, Mrs. Moore. Tell me exactly how it was brought

about," thinking to turn the current of her thoughts even for a moment.

She told him how Anna had gone out in the early afternoon, without

saying where she was going, and how she had returned to the house about

five o'clock, looking so pale and ill, that Hannah, an old family

servant who still lived with them, noticed it and begged her to sit

down while she went to fetch her a cup of tea. The maid left her

sitting by the fire-place reading a paper, and the next thing was the

terrible cry that brought them both. They found her lying on the floor

unconscious with the crumpled newspaper in her hand.

"See, here is the paper now, doctor," and he stooped to pick up the

crumpled sheet from which the girl had read her death warrant.

Together they went over it in the hope that it might furnish some clue.

Mrs. Moore's eyes were the first to fall on the fatal paragraph. She

read it through, then showed it to the doctor.

"That is undoubtedly the cause of the seizure," said the doctor.

"Oh, my poor, poor darling," moaned the mother, and the first tears

fell.




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