“Horrible, Guy! how can you imagine such a thing?  Base and worthless as you have made me, I am too much in your power, I fear—­I love you still too much; and, though like a poison or a firebrand you have clung to my bosom, I could not have felt for you a single thought of resentment.  You say well when you call me shrinking.  I am a creature of a thousand fears; I am all weakness and worthlessness.”

“Well, well—­let us not talk further of this.  When was the doctor here last?”

“In the evening he came, and left some directions, but told us plainly what we had to expect.  He said she could not survive longer than the night; and she looks like it, for within the last few hours she has sunk surprisingly.  But have you brought the medicine?”

“I have, and some drops which are said to stimulate and strengthen.”

“I fear they are now of little use, and may only serve to keep up life in misery.  But they may enable her to speak, and I should like to hear what she seems so desirous to impart.”

Ellen took the cordial, and hastily preparing a portion in a wine-glass, according to the directions, proceeded to administer it to the gasping patient; but, while the glass was at her lips, the last paroxysm of death came on, and with it something more of that consciousness now fleeting for ever.  Dashing aside the nostrum with one hand, with the other she drew the shrinking and half-fainting girl to her side, and, pressing her down beside her, appeared to give utterance to that which, from the action, and the few and audible words she made out to articulate, would seem to have been a benediction.

Rivers, seeing the motion, and remarking the almost supernatural strength with which the last spasms had endued her, would have taken the girl from her embrace; but his design was anticipated by the dying woman, whose eyes glared upon him with an expression rather demoniac than human, while her paralytic hand, shaking with ineffectual effort, waved him off.  A broken word escaped her lips here and there, and—­“sin”—­“forgiveness”—­was all that reached the ears of her grandchild, when her head sank back upon the pillow, and she expired without a groan.

A dead silence followed this event.  The girl had no uttered anguish—­she spoke not her sorrows aloud; yet there was that in the wobegone countenance, and the dumb grief, that left no doubt of the deep though suppressed and half-subdued agony of soul within.  She seemed one to whom the worst of life had been long since familiar, and who would not find it difficult herself to die.  She had certainly outlived pride and hope, if not love; and if the latter feeling had its place in her bosom, as without doubt it had, then was it a hopeless lingerer, long after the sunshine and zephyr had gone which first awakened it into bloom and flower.  She knelt beside the inanimate form of her old parent, shedding no tear, and uttering no sigh.  Tears would have poorly expressed the wo which at that moment