All at once the eyes opened wide, the muscles were drawn and contracted, a line of foam started out between the lips.

One violent convulsion passed over the limbs, then they fell loose and nerveless; the eyes closed, the lips parted--the life, scarcely twenty-four hours old, had passed away.
So sudden, so strange was the event--the almost instantaneous gliding from life to death--that Bella had not altered her position, or loosened her clasp when the final change, so awful and yet so beautiful, settled down upon the baby's face.

Then she put it into the nurse's arms, and they looked at one another.

They dared not speak, for the mother would have heard them, and their consultation how to tell her must needs be a speechless one; but what consultation could have altered the fact, or softened the awe and terror with which they bent over that little lifeless form?
Lucia came from the low chair where the two elder children sat together, and where she had been talking softly to them; she came to Bella's side, and saw the truth.

It was but by a gesture that her cry of horror could be repressed, but it was repressed, and for a minute the three paused irresolute and tearful, wondering what to do?
Then the nurse said softly, "She's got to know it, poor soul! It's best tell her at once," and stepped to the bedside.
But there was no need to tell anything.