She tried to collect her scattered thoughts,
and separate her confused dreams from her waking perceptions. The gray
light of morning already crept in through the crevices of the closed
windows, and threw a cold uncertain light on the familiar objects
around, only rendering them strange and indistinguishable. While yet
she lay uncertain, the footsteps left the next room and approached
hers, with the same light but measured sound. Her door opened and Kate
entered, still in her ball-dress, with her long black ringlets forced
back off her forehead. She drew the curtains aside gently and leant
over the bed, then pressed her little white hands over her temples,
and muttering some indistinct words, gazed upon her mother.

Were the widow's life to be lengthened out into eternity itself, she
never might forget that look of her lost child. As a flash of the
destroying lightning, it blasted her heart's hope, and turned it to
ashes. She sprang up and clasped her arms round her daughter: "Mercy,
mercy, Kate!" she cried, "speak to me once more. Are you ill? Do you
suffer?" Oh! the sad, sad voice! Each word the poor girl spoke in
answer, froze her hearer's blood, as though that gentle breath had
been the ice-blast of the pole. "I do not know, mother," she replied,
"but I have such a pain here." She pressed her hands slowly over her
brow, and with her white taper fingers put back the loosened hair.
Then in hurried accents whispered,--"Do not tell him--do not let them
take me away--but God help me, mother!" she added wildly: "I think I
am MAD!" and it was true. She sank beneath her first and only sorrow.
In the effort to bear up against it, her mind gave way; and she who
might have diffused happiness on all around her, as a fountain sends
forth its waters, is to smile no more.

She was attacked that morning by a violent fever which lasted many
weeks. At length she gradually seemed to amend, but remained quite
unconscious of her mother's unceasing care. The bright red spot that
burned upon her pale cheek, and the sharp hard cough that every now
and then shook her wasted frame, forbade awakening hope. "When she is
able to move," said her medical attendant, "the climate of Malta may
be beneficial, but it is my sad duty to say that there is no prospect
of her mind being re-established." "Save her for me," said the
wretched mother, "even should I never hear her bless me again.
Darkened though she may be, she is still the lesser light that