I swear it by your death-bed, mother, and I will keep my oath!" The mother pressed her hand.

The film of death was in her eyes.

She strove to speak; there was a quick, dreadful convulsion, then an awful calm.
Within the same hour, with miles between them, Sir Jasper Kingsland and Zara, his outcast daughter, died.
* * * * * * The dawn of another day crept silently over the Devon hill-tops as Lady Kingsland arose from her husband's deathbed.
White, and stark, and rigid, the late lord of Kingsland Court lay in the awful majesty of death.
The doctor, the rector, the nurse, sat, pale and somber watchers, in the death-room.

More than an hour before the youthful baronet had been sent to his room, worn out with his night's watching.
It was the Reverend Cyrus Green who urged my lady now to follow him.
"You look utterly exhausted, my dear Lady Kingsland," he said.

"Pray retire and endeavor to sleep.