say was
utterly in vain. She evidently _felt_ nothing of it to be true. She had
received a deep and cruel hurt; and the poor, wild, half-civilized, shy,
silent soul had not wherewith to reason on it. She only endured, and
held her peace, and let the fire burn; and her sensitive nerves had
allowed pain of mind to become severe physical disease. My words she
scarcely heard; my tears were to her only sympathy. She knew what she
had seen. Besides, her disease increased upon her. Almost from minute to
minute she grew more restless, and her increasing inattention to what
I said frightened as well as hurt me. The medicines of Dr. Nash were
useless. Before noon I sent for Dr. Bagford, who said it was decidedly
brain-fever,--that she must be leeched, and have ice at her head, and so
forth.

Ah, it was useless. She grew worse and worse; passed through one or two
long terrible days of frantic misery, crying and protesting against
false accusations with a lamenting voice that made us all cry, too; then
lay long in a stupid state, until the doctor said that now it would
be better for her to die, because, after such an attack, a brain so
sensitive would be disorganized,--she would be an idiot.

Her poor mother came and helped us wait on her. But neither care nor
medicine availed. Bridget died; and the funeral was from our house.
I was surprised by the lofty demeanor of Father MacMullen, the Irish
priest, the first I had ever met: a tall, gaunt, bony, black-haired,
hollow-eyed man, of inscrutable and guarded demeanor, who received with
absolute haughtiness the courtesies of my husband and the reverences of
his own flock. A few of his expressions might indicate a consciousness
that we had endeavored to deal kindly with poor little Bridget. But he
did not think so; or at least we know that he has so handled the matter
that we meet ill feeling on account of it.

The griefs for any such misfortune were, however, obscure and shallow in
comparison with my sorrow for the untimely quenching of Bridget's young
life, and my sympathy with her poor old mother. When I reasoned about
the affair, I could see that I had done nothing which would not be
commended by careful housekeepers. I could see it, but, in spite of me,
I could not feel it. I was tormented by vain wishes that I had done
otherwise. I could not help feeling as if her people charged me with her
blood,--as if I had been in some sense aiding in her death. Nor do I
even now escape obs