"OLIVIA."

The last line was written in a shaken, irregular hand, and her name was
half blotted out, as if a tear had fallen upon it. I remained there
alone on the wild and solitary cliffs until it was time to return to the
steamer.

Tardif was waiting for me at the entrance of the little tunnel through
which the road passes down to the harbor. He did not speak at first, but
he drew out of his pocket an old leather pouch filled with yellow
papers. Among them lay a long curling tress of shining hair. He touched
it gently with his finger, as if it had feeling and consciousness.

"You would like to have it, doctor?" he said.

"Ay," I answered, and that only. I could not venture upon another word.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-THIRD.

THE EBB OF LIFE.

There was nothing now for me to do but to devote myself wholly to my
mother.

I made the malady under which she was slowly sinking my special study.
There remained a spark of hope yet in my heart that I might by diligent,
intense, unflagging search, discover some remedy yet untried, or perhaps
unthought of. I succeeded only in alleviating her sufferings. I pored
over every work which treated of the same class of diseases. At last in
an old, almost-forgotten book, I came upon a simple medicament, which,
united with appliances made available by modern science, gave her
sensible relief, and without doubt tended to prolong her shortening
days. The agonizing thought haunted me that, had I come upon this
discovery at an earlier stage of her illness, her life might have been
spared for many years.

But it was too late now. She suffered less, and her spirits grew calm
and even. We even ventured, at her own wish, to spend a week together in
Sark, she and I--a week never to be forgotten, full of exquisite pain
and exquisite enjoyment to us both. We revisited almost every place
where we had been many years before, while I was but a child and she was
still young and strong. Tardif rowed us out in his boat under the
cliffs. Then we came home again, and she sank rapidly, as if the flame
of life had been burning too quickly in the breath of those innocent
pleasures.

Now she began to be troubled again with the dread of leaving me alone
and comfortless. There is no passage in Christ's farewell to His
disciples which, touches me so much as those words, "I will not leave
you comfortless; I will come unto you." My mother could not promise to
come back to me, and her dying vision