d to
isolate him on the top floor, and I cleared away carpets and curtains,
hung sheets over the doorways and kept them wet with chloride of lime,
shut myself up there with the boy, having my meals left on the
landing; and when all risk was over, proudly handed back my charge,
the disease touching no one else in the house.

And now the spring of 1874 had come, and in a few weeks my mother and
I were to set up house together. How we had planned all, and had
knitted on the new life together we anticipated to the old one we
remembered! How we had discussed Mabel's education, and the share
which should fall to each! Day-dreams; day-dreams! never to be
realised.

My mother went up to town, and in a week or two I received a telegram,
saying she was dangerously ill, and as fast as express train would
take me I was beside her. Dying, the doctor said; three days she might
live--no more. I told her the death-sentence, but she said resolutely,
"I do not feel that I am going to die just yet," and she was right.
There was an attack of fearful prostration--the valves of the heart
had failed--a very wrestling with Death, and then the grim shadow drew
backwards. I nursed her day and night with a very desperation of
tenderness, for now Fate had touched the thing dearest to me in life.
A second horrible crisis came, and for the second time her tenacity
and my love beat back the death-stroke. She did not wish to die, the
love of life was strong in her; I would not let her die; between us we
kept the foe at bay. Then dropsy supervened, and the end loomed slowly
sure.

It was then, after eighteen months' abstention, that I took the
Sacrament for the last time. My mother had an intense longing to
communicate before she died, but absolutely refused to do so unless I
took it with her. "If it be necessary to salvation," she persisted,
doggedly, "I will not take it if darling Annie is to be shut out. I
would rather be lost with her than saved without her." I went to a
clergyman I knew well, and laid the case before him; as I expected, he
refused to allow me to communicate. I tried a second, with the same
result. At last a thought struck me. There was Dean Stanley, my
mother's favourite, a man known to be of the broadest school within
the Church of England; suppose I asked him? I did not know him, and I
felt the request would be an impertinence; but there was just the
chance that he might consent, and what would I not do to make my
darling's