CHAPTER XXIII.

An hour later, when Constance went to see Mrs. Dewey, she found her in a state of unconsciousness, nature having at last given way.  Not long after I left the house, her mother, on entering the room where the children were laid out, found her insensible, lying across the bed, with her dead babes clasped in her arms.

Mrs. Floyd sent word for me to come and see her daughter, as she continued in a lethargic state.  I found her like one in a deep sleep, only her breathing was light, and her pulse very feeble, but regular.  She was out of the reach of my skill, and in the hands of the Great Physician.  I could only trust the cure to Him.  No medicine for the body would be of any avail here.  I called again in the afternoon; but found no change.  How little was there in the pale, pinched face that lay among the white pillows, to remind me of the handsome, dashing Mrs. Dewey, of a year gone by!

“What do you think of her, Doctor?”

Mrs. Floyd put the question.  The tone had in it something that made me look narrowly into the speaker’s face.  My ears had not deceived me.

There was the wish in her heart that Delia might die!

I was not surprised at this.  And yet the revelation of such a state of feeling, in so good and true a woman, as I had reason to know Mrs. Floyd to be, made my heart bound with a throb of pain.

Alas! alas!  Into what unnatural conditions may not the mind fall, through suffering that shuts out human hope!

“Nature,” said I, in answer to the question of Mrs. Floyd, “may be only gathering up her powers after a long period of exhaustion.  The strife through which your daughter has passed—­calmly passed to all external seeming—­has not been without a wasting of internal life.  How she kept on so evenly to the end, passes my comprehension.  There is not one woman in a thousand who could have so borne herself through to the final act.  It is meet that she should rest now.”

“If she were sleeping with her babes, happy would it be for her!”

Tears fell over the face of Mrs. Floyd.

“God knows what is best,” I remarked.

“She has nothing to live for in this world.”  A sob broke from its repression, and heaved the mother’s bosom.  “O Doctor, if I saw the death dews on her brow, I would not weep!”

“Leave her, my dear friend,” said I, “in the hands of Him who sees deeper into the heart than it is possible for our eyes to penetrate.  Her feet have left the soft, flowery ways they trod for a time, and turned into rough paths, where every footfall is upon sharp stones; but it may be that a blessed land is smiling beyond, he has been astray in the world, and God may only be leading her homeward by the way of sorrow.”

Mrs. Floyd wept freely as I talked.

“His will be done,” she said, sobbing.

“Your daughter,” said I, taking the occasion to bear my testimony on the favorable side, “has been wronged without question.  She was doubtless imprudent, but not sinful; and the present attempt to disgrace her I regard as a cruel wrong.  It will recoil, I trust, in a way not dreamed of.”