Her paroxysm had now risen to a degree of fury that fell little, if anything, short of insanity—­temporary insanity it certainly was.  She tore her beautiful hair from her head in handfuls, and would have proceeded to still greater lengths, when she was seized by some of those present, in order to restrain her violence.  On finding that she was held fast, she looked at them with blazing eyes, and struggled to set herself free; but on finding her efforts vain, she panted deeply three or four times, threw back her head, and fell into a fit that, from its violence, resembled epilepsy.  After a lapse of ten minutes or so, the spasmodic action, having probably wasted her physical strength, ceased, and she lay in a quiet trance; so quiet, indeed, that it might have passed for death, were it not for the deep expression of pain and suffering which lay upon her face, and betrayed the fury of the moral tempest which swept through her heart and brain.  All the mother’s grief now was hushed—­all the faculties of her soul were now concentrated on her daughter, and absorbed by the intense anxiety she felt for her recovery.  She sat behind the poor girl, and drew her body back so that her head rested on her bosom, to which she pressed her, kissing her passive lips with streaming eyes.

“O, darling Nannie!” she exclaimed, “strive and rouse yourself; it is your loving mother that asks you.  Waken up, poor misled and heart-broken girl, waken up; I forgive you all your errors.  O, avillish machree (sweetness of my heart), don’t you hear that it is your mother’s voice that’s spakin’ to you!”

She was still, however, insensible; and her little brothers were all in tears about her.

“O mother!” said the oldest, sobbing, “is Nannie dead too?  When she went away from us you bid us not to cry, that she would soon come back; and now she has only come back to die.  Nannie, I’m your own little Frank; won’t you hear me I Nannie, will you never wash my face of a Sunday morning more? will you never comb down my hair, put the pin in my shirt collar, and kiss me, as you used to do before we went to Mass together?”

The poor mother was so much overcome by this artless allusion to her innocent life, involving, as it did, such a manifestation of affection, that she wept until fairly exhausted, after which she turned her eyes up to heaven and exclaimed, whilst her daughter’s inanimate body still lay in her arms,

“O Lord of mercy, will you not look down with pity and compassion on me this night!”

In the course of about ten minutes after this her daughter’s eyes began to fill with those involuntary tears which betoken in females recovery from a fit; they streamed quietly, but in torrents, down her cheek.  She gave a deep sigh, opened her eyes, looked around her, first with astonishment, and then toward the bed with a start of horror.

“Where am I?” said she.

“You are with me, darlin’,” replied the mother, kissing her lips, and whispering, “Nannie, I forgive you—­I forgive you; and whisper, your father did before he went to death.”