“Stop!” she exclaimed, now repelling instead of soliciting the embrace—­“there isn’t the love of a mother in that woman’s heart—­an’ what did I hear?—­that she swore my father’s life away—­her husband’s life away.  No, no; I’m changed—­I see my father’s blood, shed by her, too, his own wife!  Look at her features, they’re hard and harsh—­there’s no love in her eyes—­they’re cowld and sevare.  No, no; there’s something wrong there—­I feel that—­I feel it—­it’s here—­the feelin’s in my heart—­oh, what a dark hour this is!  You were right, Biddy, you brought me black news this day—­but it won’t—­it won’t throuble me long—­it won’t trouble this poor brain long—­it won’t pierce this poor heart long—­I hope not.  Oh!” she exclaimed, turning to Mave, and extending her arms towards her, “Mave Sullivan, let me die!”

The affectionate but disappointed girl had all Mave’s sympathies, whose warm and affectionate feelings recoiled from the coldness and apparent want of natural tenderness which characterized the mother’s manner, under circumstances in themselves so affecting.  Still, after having soothed Sarah for a few minutes, and placed her head once more upon the pillow, she whispered to the mother, who seemed to think more than to feel: 

“Don’t be surprised; when you consider the state she’s in—­and indeed it isn’t to be wondered at after what she has heard—­you must make every allowance for the poor girl.”

Sarah’s emotions were now evidently in incessant play.

“Biddy,” said she, “come here again; help me up.”

“Dear Sarah,” said Mave, “you are not able to bear all this; if you could compose yourself an’ forget everything unpleasant for a while, till you grow strong—­”

“If I could forget that my mother has no heart to love me with—­that she’s cowld and strange to me:  if I could forget that she’s brought my father to a shameful death—­my father’s heart wasn’t altogether bad; no, an’ he was wanst—­I mane in his early life—­a good man.  I know that—­I feel that—­’dear Sarah, sleep—­deep, dear Sarah’—­no, bad as he is, there was a thousand times more love and nature in the voice that spoke them words than in a hundred women like my mother, that hasn’t yet kissed my lips.  Biddy, come here, I say—­here—­lift me up again.”

There was such energy, and fire, and command, in her voice and words now, that Mave could not remonstrate any longer, nor the nurse refuse to obey her.  When she was once more placed sitting, she looked about her—­

“Mother,” she said, “come here!”

And as she pronounced the word mother, a trait so beautiful, so exquisite, so natural, and so pathetic, accompanied it, that Mave once more wept.  Her voice, in uttering the word, quivered, and softened into tenderness, with the affection which nature itself seems to have associated with it.  Sarah herself remarked this, even in the anguish of the moment.