e
medicines,--great faith in her husband's skill; but the child's
disease was obstinate, very; no progress could be discovered. It was
a comforting thought, at least, that, if his recovery was beyond
possibility, something had been done to soothe his pain and quiet
the vexed spirit in its bitter struggle with dissolution. Yes, the
medicines were certainly very quieting,--so quieting, so death-like
in their influence,--she could not tell how a suspicion (perhaps the
strange expression of the child's eye, when they were administered)
glided into her imagination (having so great a reverence for her
husband, it took no place in her mind for an instant,--it was merely a
spectral, haunting shadow) that these things were getting the child
no better,--that they were not medicine for keeping him here, but for
helping him away. This suspicion, breathing its baleful breath across
her mind, weak, vacillating, incapable of energetic action, had
rendered her miserable, morose, irritable, more so than ever before.
Yet little Jacques in his last hour hankered for the medicine, and
craved feverishly the delicate powder, the sweet confection, his
father prepared for him.

While inwardly brooding over this unnamed terror, and cowering before
this shapeless thought which loomed in the darkness of her mental
gloom, an idea entered her mind that I, too, was suspicious that
something was going wrong,--that I was watching,--waiting the evil to
come. The child died. Her fear for him was utterly superseded by fear
for her husband. What if I should find him out and betray him? The
anxiety occasioned by this possibility made her hate me. The agony
of her little one's departure, the fear of some dire discovery, the
consciousness of guilt near enough of vicinage almost to seem her
own, combined to nearly distract her mind, and it seemed like a joyful
relief when I departed. The sudden release from that constant pressure
of fear (she knew I could do nothing against them without money,
credit, or friends) made her ill for a time, quite ill, she said. She
knew not what was done for her during this sickness,--who nursed her,
or who gave her medicine. But one morning, on waking from what seemed
a long sleep, in which she had dreamed strangely and talked wildly,
she beheld Monsieur, smiling kindly, standing beside her bed with a
vial and a spoon in his hand.

"It is a cordial, my dear, which will strengthen and bring you round
again very soon. You need