ight
could have power to arrest.

The health of her mother had been long declining, and her illness at
this time increased so far as to render medical assistance useless, and
baffled the skill of the ablest physicians. A trial so new, so
afflicting, and so grievous to her youthful mind, to lose one of her
honoured parents, and to be unexpectedly summoned to her parental home
to receive the last benediction of a beloved mother, and at this early
period of her life to be deprived of her kind care and protection, was
unfortunate in the extreme.

[["Baffled the skill of the ablest physicians" was a stock
phrase.]]

Every anxious solicitude and responsibility now rested alone upon a
widowed father, who mourned deeply their common bereavement, while he
felt conscious that all his fatherly care and caresses could never
supply to Alida all the necessary requisitions that she had unhappily
lost in so dear and interested a friend. When he observed her spirits
languish, and the tear frequently starting in her eye, and her former
sprightly countenance shaded with the deep tinges of melancholy, he saw
that the cheerfulness and gaiety of her natural disposition had received
a powerful check, which promised to be lasting.

[["Sprightly" is a favorite adjective in _Alonzo and Melissa_;
by the time of _Alida_ it was going out of fashion.]]

From this unhappy period she remained at home a long time with her
father. In kindred grief there was derived a congenial sympathy, and her
society contributed in some degree to allay his sorrow, as the deep
concern he felt in her welfare caused him sometimes to restrain the flow
of it in her presence. Self-exertion roused him in a measure from his
lethargy, and by thus assuming serenity, to become in reality something
more composed. Nevertheless, he would often witness the excess of
anguish which had taken place in the bosom of his child, and behold her
interesting face bathed in tears, and her youthful brow clouded with a
sadness that nothing seemingly could dissipate.

[_NY Weekly_: Mrs. Mordaunt:

to me they were inexpressibly soothing, from kindred grief there
was derived a congenial sympathy.
...
Their happiness, the education of my child, and self-exertion,
roused me from the lethargy of grief, and diffused a calm over my
mind I never hoped to have experienced.]

His situation now became more sequestered than ever; he roamed in
solitude, or pleased h