nd yet soothed. The calm silent sorrow,
too deep for outward tokens, was so unlike her father's usually
demonstrative habits, as to impress her all the more, yet those two
tears were followed by no more; there was much strangeness and confusion
in her mind in the newness of grief.

She found poor Flora, spent with exertion, under the reaction of all she
had undergone, lying on her bed, sobbing as if her heart would break,
calling in gasps of irrepressible agony on "mamma! mamma!" yet with
her face pressed down on the pillow that she might not be heard. Ethel,
terrified and distressed, timidly implored her to be comforted, but it
seemed as if she were not even heard; she would have fetched some one,
but whom? Alas! alas! it brought back the sense that no mother would
ever soothe them--Margaret, papa, both so ill, nurse engaged with
Margaret! Ethel stood helpless and despairing, and Flora sobbed on, so
that Mary awakened to burst out in a loud frightened fit of crying; but
in a few moments a step was at the door, a knock, and Richard asked, "Is
anything the matter?"

He was in the room in a moment, caressing and saying affectionate things
with gentleness and fondling care, like his mother, and which recalled
the days when he had been proud to be left for a little while the small
nurse and guardian of the lesser ones. Mary was hushed in a moment, and
Flora's exhausted weeping was gradually soothed, when she was able
to recollect that she was keeping him from her father; with kind
good-nights, he left Ethel to read to her till she could sleep. Long did
Ethel read, after both her sisters were slumbering soundly; she went on
in a sort of dreamy grief, almost devoid of pain, as if all this was too
terrible to be true: and she had imagined herself into a story, which
would give place at dawn to her ordinary life.

At last she went to bed, and slept till wakened by the return of Flora,
who had crept down in her dressing-gown to see how matters were going.
Margaret was in the same state, papa was asleep, after a restless
distressing night, with much pain and some fever; and whenever Richard
had begun to hope from his tranquillity, that he was falling asleep,
he was undeceived by hearing an almost unconsciously uttered sigh of
"Maggie, my Maggie!" and then the head turned wearily on the pillow,
as if worn out with the misery from which there was no escape. Towards
morning the pain had lessened, and, as he slept, he seemed much l