So she lay alone,poor lady,and there was no sound about her,and her thin little mouth began to feebly quiver,and her great eyes,which stared at the hangings,to fill with slow cold tears,for in sooth they were not warm,but seemed to chill her poor cheeks as they rolled slowly down them,leaving a wet streak behind them which she was too far gone in weakness to attempt to lift her hand to wipe away.
"Nine times like this,"she panted faintly,"and 'tis for naught but oaths and hard words that blame me.I was but a child myself and he loved me.When 'twas 'My Daphne,'and 'My beauteous little Daphne,'he loved me in his own man's way.But now--"she faintly rolled her head from side to side."Women are poor things"--a chill salt tear sliding past her lips so that she tasted its bitterness--"only to be kissed for an hour,and then like this--only for this and nothing else.I would that this one had been dead."Her breath came slower and more pantingly,and her eyes stared more widely.
"I was but a child,"she whispered--"a child--as--as this will be--if she lives fifteen years."
Despite her weakness,and it was great and woefully increasing with each panting breath,she slowly laboured to turn herself towards the pillow on which her offspring lay,and,this done,she lay staring at the child and gasping,her thin chest rising and falling convulsively.Ah,how she panted,and how she stared,the glaze of death stealing slowly over her wide-opened eyes;and yet,dimming as they were,they saw in the sleeping infant a strange and troublous thing--though it was but a few hours old 'twas not as red and crumple visaged as new-born infants usually are,its little head was covered with thick black silk,and its small features were of singular definiteness.She dragged herself nearer to gaze.
"She looks not like the others,"she said."They had no beauty--and are safe.She--she will be like--Jeoffry--and like ME."The dying fire fell lower with a shuddering sound.
"If she is--beautiful,and has but her father,and no mother!"she whispered,the words dragged forth slowly,"only evil can come to her.From her first hour--she will know naught else,poor heart,poor heart!"There was a rattling in her throat as she breathed,but in her glazing eyes a gleam like passion leaped,and gasping,she dragged nearer.
"'Tis not fair,"she cried."If I--if I could lay my hand upon thy mouth--and stop thy breathing--thou poor thing,'twould be fairer--but--I have no strength."
She gathered all her dying will and brought her hand up to the infant's mouth.A wild look was on her poor,small face,she panted and fell forward on its breast,the rattle in her throat growing louder.The child awakened,opening great black eyes,and with her dying weakness its new-born life struggled.Her cold hand lay upon I its mouth,and her head upon its body,for she was too far gone to move if she had willed to do so.But the tiny creature's strength was marvellous.It gasped,it fought,its little limbs struggled beneath her,it writhed until the cold hand fell away,and then,its baby mouth set free,it fell a-shrieking.Its cries were not like those of a new-born thing,but fierce and shrill,and even held the sound of infant passion.'Twas not a thing to let its life go easily,'twas of those born to do battle.
Its lusty screaming pierced her ear perhaps--she drew a long,slow breath,and then another,and another still--the last one trembled and stopped short,and the last cinder fell dead from the fire.
When the nurse came bustling and fretting back,the chamber was cold as the grave's self--there were only dead embers on the hearth,the new-born child's cries filled all the desolate air,and my lady was lying stone dead,her poor head resting on her offspring's feet,the while her open glazed eyes seemed to stare at it as if in asking Fate some awful question.
