g them from the basket, that she might see the leaves.
All at once she appeared to be agitated; she looked at the basket, then
around, as if there were some fearful presence about her which she was
searching for with her eager glances. She took out the flowers, one by
one, her breathing growing hurried, her eyes staring, her hands
trembling,--till, as she came near the bottom of the basket, she flung
out all the rest with a hasty movement, looked upon the olive-purple
leaflets as if paralyzed for a moment, shrunk up, as it were, into
herself in a curdling terror, dashed the basket from her, and fell back
senseless, with a faint cry which chilled the blood of the startled
listeners at her bedside.

"Take it away!--take it away!--quick!" said Old Sophy, as she hastened
to her mistress's pillow. "It 's the leaves of the tree that was always
death to her,--take it away! She can't live wi' it in the room!"

The poor old woman began chafing Elsie's hands, and Helen to try to rouse
her with hartshorn, while a third frightened attendant gathered up the
flowers and the basket and carried them out of the apartment, She came to
herself after a time, but exhausted and then wandering. In her delirium
she talked constantly as if she were in a cave, with such exactness of
circumstance that Helen could not doubt at all that she had some such
retreat among the rocks of The Mountain, probably fitted up in her own
fantastic way, where she sometimes hid herself from all human eyes, and
of the entrance to which she alone possessed the secret.

All this passed away, and left her, of course, weaker than before. But
this was not the only influence the unexplained paroxysm had left behind
it. From this time forward there was a change in her whole expression
and her manner. The shadows ceased flitting over her features, and the
old woman, who watched her from day to day and from hour to hour as a
mother watches her child, saw the likeness she bore to her mother coming
forth more and more, as the cold glitter died out of the diamond eyes,
and the stormy scowl disappeared from the dark brows and low forehead.

With all the kindness and indulgence her father had bestowed upon her,
Elsie had never felt that he loved her. The reader knows well enough
what fatal recollections and associations had frozen up the springs of
natural affection in his breast. There was nothing in the world he would
not do for Elsie. He had sacrificed his whole lif