“He said once of a man, that his conscience was a coxcomb.  Will you believe that when he saw his son’s wife—­poor victim! lying delirious, he could not even then see his error.  You said he wished to take Providence out of God’s hands.  His mad self-deceit would not leave him.  I am positive, that while he was standing over her, he was blaming her for not having considered the child.  Indeed he made a remark to me that it was unfortunate ‘disastrous,’ I think he said—­that the child should have to be fed by hand.  I dare say it is.  All I pray is that this young child may be saved from him.  I cannot bear to see him look on it.  He does not spare himself bodily fatigue—­but what is that? that is the vulgarest form of love.  I know what you will say.  You will say I have lost all charity, and I have.  But I should not feel so, Austin, if I could be quite sure that he is an altered man even now the blow has struck him.  He is reserved and simple in his speech, and his grief is evident, but I have doubts.  He heard her while she was senseless call him cruel and harsh, and cry that she had suffered, and I saw then his mouth contract as if he had been touched.  Perhaps, when he thinks, his mind will be clearer, but what he has done cannot be undone.  I do not imagine he will abuse women any more.  The doctor called her a ‘forte et belle jeune femme:’  and he said she was as noble a soul as ever God moulded clay upon.  A noble soul ’forte et belle!’ She lies upstairs.  If he can look on her and not see his sin, I almost fear God will never enlighten him.”

She died five days after she had been removed.  The shock had utterly deranged her.  I was with her.  She died very quietly, breathing her last breath without pain—­asking for no one—­a death I should like to die.

“Her cries at one time were dreadfully loud.  She screamed that she was ‘drowning in fire,’ and that her husband would not come to her to save her.  We deadened the sound as much as we could, but it was impossible to prevent Richard from hearing.  He knew her voice, and it produced an effect like fever on him.  Whenever she called he answered.  You could not hear them without weeping.  Mrs. Berry sat with her, and I sat with him, and his father moved from one to the other.

“But the trial for us came when she was gone.  How to communicate it to Richard—­or whether to do so at all!  His father consulted with us.  We were quite decided that it would be madness to breathe it while he was in that state.  I can admit now—­as things have turned out—­we were wrong.  His father left us—­I believe he spent the time in prayer—­and then leaning on me, he went to Richard, and said in so many words, that his Lucy was no more.  I thought it must kill him.  He listened, and smiled.  I never saw a smile so sweet and so sad.  He said he had seen her die, as if he had passed through his suffering a long time ago.  He shut his eyes.  I could see by the motion of his eyeballs up that he was straining his sight to some inner heaven.—­I cannot go on.