Just as another woman sleeps.
D. G. Rossetti.

It was not till a week or two later that Gertrude brought herself to tell Lucy what had happened during her absence. It was a bleak afternoon in the beginning of December; in the next room lay Phyllis, cold and stiff and silent for ever; and Lucy was drearily searching in a cupboard for certain mourning garments which hung there. But suddenly, from the darkness of the lowest shelf, something shone up at her, a white, shimmering object, lying coiled there like a snake.

It was Phyllis\'s splendid satin gown,[Pg 267] which Gertrude had flung there on the fateful night, and, from sheer repugnance, had never disturbed.

"But you must send it back," Lucy said, when in a few broken words her sister had explained its presence in the cupboard.

Lucy was very pale and very serious. She gathered up the satin gown, which nothing could have induced Gertrude to touch, folded it neatly, and began looking about for brown paper in which to enclose it.

The ghastly humour of the little incident struck Gertrude. "There is some string in the studio," she said, half-ironically, and went back to her post in the chamber of death.

In her long narrow coffin lay Phyllis; beautiful and still, with flowers between her hands. She had drifted out of life quietly enough a few days before; to-morrow she would be lying under the newly-turned cemetery sods.

Gertrude stood a moment, looking down at the exquisite face. On the breast of the dead girl lay a mass of pale violets which Lord Watergate had sent the day before, and as Gertrude looked, there flashed through her mind, what had long since vanished from it,[Pg 268] the recollection of Lord Watergate\'s peculiar interest in Phyllis.

It was explained now, she thought, as the image of another dead face floated before her vision. That also was the face of a woman, beautiful and frail; of a woman who had sinned. She had never seen the resemblance before; it was clear enough now.

Then she took up once again her watcher\'s seat at the bed-side, and strove to banish thought.

To do and do and do; that is all that remains to one in a world where thinking, for all save a few chosen beings, must surely mean madness.

She had fallen into a half stupor, when she was aware of a subtle sense of discomfort creeping over her; of an odour, strong and sweet and indescribably hateful, floating around her like a winged nightmare. Opening her eyes with an effort, she saw Mrs. Mary on standing gravely at the foot of the bed, an enormous wreath of tuberose............