earn that he was to die again?

But human suffering cannot outlast human strength; as a marvellous
adjustment of forces has ordered that even at the pole, in the regions of
boundless and perpetual cold, the sea shall not freeze to the bottom, so
there is also in human nature a point beyond which suffering cannot
extend. The wildest emotions must expend themselves in time, the fiercest
passions must burn out. At the end of two hours Mary Goddard was
exhausted by the vehemence of her hysteric fear, and woke as from a dream
to a dull sense of reality. She knew, now that some power of reflection
was restored to her, that the squire would give her intelligence of what
had happened, so soon as he was able, and she knew also that she must
wait until the morning before any such message could reach her. She took
the candle from the table and went upstairs. Nellie was asleep, but her
mother felt a longing to look at her again that night, not knowing what
misery for her child the morrow might bring forth.

Nellie lay asleep in her bed, her rich brown hair plaited together and
thrown back across the pillow. The long dark fringes of her eyelashes
cast a shade upon the transparent colour of her cheek, and the light
breath came softly through her parted lips. But as Mary Goddard looked
she saw that there were still tears upon her lovely face and that the
pillow was still wet. She had cried herself to sleep, for Martha had told
her that her mother was very ill and would not see her that night; Nellie
was accustomed to say her prayers at her mother's knee every evening
before going to bed, she was used to having her mother smooth her pillow
and kiss her and put out her light, leaving her with sweet words, to wake
her with sweet words on the next morning, and to-night she had missed all
this and had been told moreover that her mother was very ill and was
acting very strangely. She had gone to bed and had cried herself to
sleep, and the tears were still upon her cheeks. Shading the light
carefully from the child's eyes, Mary Goddard bent down and kissed her
forehead once and then feeling that her sorrow was rising again she
turned and passed noiselessly from the room.

But Nellie was dreaming peacefully and knew nothing of her mother's
visit; she slept on not knowing that scarcely a quarter of a mile away
her own father, whom she had been taught to think of as dead, was
lying at the Hall, wounded and unconscious while half the detectives