There are moments when the fountains of grief become dried up.  It was so with Mrs. Wentworth.  The sight of her dead child’s face—­beautiful in death—­for it wore a calm and placid exterior, too life-like for death, too rigid for life, awoke no emotion in her bosom; nor did the knowledge that the infant would soon be placed in the grave, and be forever hidden from the gaze she now placed on it so steadfastly, cause a single tear drop to gather in her eye, nor a sigh to burst from her pale and firmly closed lips.  And yet, there raged within her breast a volcano, the violence of whose fire would soon exhaust, and leave her scarred and blasted forever.  At that moment it kindled with a blaze, that scorched her heart, but she felt it not.  Her whole being was transformed into a mass of ruin.  She felt not the strain on the tendrils of her mind; that her overwrought brain was swaying between madness and reason.  She only saw the lifeless lineaments of her child—­the first pledge of her wedded affection—­dead before her.

It came to her like a wild dream, a mere hallucination—­an imagination of a distempered mind.  She could not believe it.  There, on that lowly bed, her child to die!  It was something too horrible for her thoughts, and though the evidence lay before her, in all its solemn grandeur, there was something to her eye so unreal and impossible in its silent magnificence that she doubted its truthfulness.

The old negro saw her misery.  She knew that the waters which run with a mild and silent surface, are often possessed of greater depth, than those which rush onward with a mighty noise.

“Come missis,” she said, placing her hand on Mrs. Wentworth’s shoulder.  “De Lord will be done.  Nebber mind.  He know better what to do dan we do, and we must all be satisfy wid his works.”

Mrs. Wentworth looked at the old woman for a moment, and a bitter smile swept across her countenance.  What were words of consolation to her?  They sounded like a mockery in her heart.  She needed them not, for they brought not to life again the child whose spirit had winged its flight to eternity, but a short time since.

“Peace old woman,” she replied calmly, “you know not what you say.  That,” she continued, pointing to the body of Ella, “that you tell me not to mourn, but to bend to the will of God.  Pshaw!  I mourn it not.  Better for the child to die than lead a beggar’s life on earth.”

“Shame, shame missis,” observed the old woman, very much shocked at what appeared to her the insensibility of Mrs. Wentworth.  “You musn’t talk dat way, it don’t do any good.”

“You know not what I mean, auntie,” Mrs. Wentworth answered in a milder tone.  “Why did I come here?  Why did I bring my child ill and dying from a shelter, and carry her through the night air, until I found a home in your lonely cabin?  Do you know why?” she continued with bitterness.  “It was because I was a beggar, and could not pay the demands of the rich.”