if every earthly stay
and friend were sliding from my grasp. I knew the meaning of that mute,
expressive glance. She was measuring her own grave by the side of
Peggy's clay cold bed,--she was commending her desolate orphan to the
Father of the fatherless, the God of the widow. She knew she would soon
be there, and I knew it too. And after the first sharp pang,--after the
arrow of conviction fastened in my heart,--I pressed it there with a
kind of stern, vindictive joy, triumphing in my capacity of suffering. I
wonder if any one ever felt as I did,--I wonder if any worm of the dust
ever writhed so impotently under the foot of Almighty God!

O kind and compassionate Father! Now I know thou art kind even in thy
chastisements, merciful even in thy judgments, by the bitter chalice I
have drained, by all the waves and billows that have gone over me, by
anguish, humiliation, repentance, and prayer. Forgive, forgive! for I
knew not what I was doing!

From that night my mother never left her bed. The fever spared her, but
she wilted like the grass beneath the scythe of the mower. Gone was the
unnatural excitement which had sustained her the last nine days; severed
the silver cord so long dimmed by secret tears.

Thank heaven! I was not doomed to see her tortured by pain, or raving in
delirious agony,--to see those exquisite features distorted by
frenzy,--or to hear that low, sweet voice untuned, the key-note of
reason lost.

Thank heaven! even death laid its hand gently on one so gentle and so
lovely.

CHAPTER X.

I said, death laid its hand gently on one so gentle and so lovely. Week
after week she lingered, almost imperceptibly fading, passing away like
a soft rolling cloud that melts into the sky. The pestilence had stayed
its ravages. The terror, the thick gloom had passed by.

If I looked abroad at sunset, I could see the windows of the village
mansions, crimsoned and glowing with the last flames of day; but no
light was reflected on our darkened home. It was all in shadow. And at
night, when the windows of Grandison Place were all illuminated,
glittering off by itself like a great lantern, the traveller could
scarcely have caught the glimmering ray of the little lamp dimly burning
in our curtained room.

Do you think I was resigned? That because I was dumb, I lay like a lamb
before the stroke of the shearer? I will tell you how resigned, how
submissive I was. I have read of the tortures of the Inquisition