living. Motionless, with this fearful look fixed upon the girl,
and her thin hands stretched towards her, she remained, second after
second. At last her outstretched hands began to tremble more and more
violently; and as if for the first time the knowledge of this calamity had
reached her, with a cry, as though body and soul were parting, she fell
back motionless in her bed.

Several hours had passed before Mrs. Marston was restored to
consciousness. To this state of utter insensibility, one of silent,
terrified stupor succeeded; and it was not until she saw her daughter
Rhoda standing at her bedside, weeping, that she found voice and
recollection to speak.

"My child; my darling, my poor child," she cried, sobbing piteously, as
she drew her to her heart and looked in her face alternately--"my
darling, my darling child!"

Rhoda could only weep, and return her poor mother's caresses in silence.
Too young and inexperienced to understand the full extent and nature of
this direful calamity, the strange occurrence, the general and apparent
consternation of the whole household, and the spectacle of her mother's
agony, had filled her with fear, perplexity, and anguish. Scared and
stunned with a vague sense of danger, like a young bird that, for the
first time, cowers under a thunderstorm, she nestled in her mother's
bosom; there, with a sense of protection, and of boundless love and
tenderness, she lay frightened, wondering, and weeping.

Two or three days passed, and Dr. Danvers came and sate for several hours
with poor Mrs. Marston. To comfort and console were, of course, out of
his power. The nature of the bereavement, far more terrible than
death--its recent occurrence--the distracting consciousness of all its
complicated consequences--rendered this a hopeless task. She bowed
herself under the blow with the submission of a broken heart. The hope to
which she had clung for years had vanished; the worst that ever her
imagination feared had come in earnest.

One idea was now constantly present in her mind. She felt a sad, but
immovable assurance, that she should not live long, and the thought,
"what will become of my darling when I am gone; who will guard and love
my child when I am in my grave; to whom is she to look for tenderness
and protection then?" perpetually haunted her, and superadded the pangs
of a still wilder despair to the desolation of a broken heart.

It was not for more than a week after this event, that