ase God, you'll get over it
all yet."

"No," she replied, in a voice so utterly changed and deprived of its
strength, that the woman could with difficulty hear or understand her.
"There's but one good bein' in the world," she said to herself, "an'
that is Mave Sullivan: I have no mother, no father--all I can love now
is Mave Sullivan--that's all."

"Every one that knows her does," said the nurse.

"Who?" said Sarah, inquiringly.

"Why, Mave Sullivan," replied the other; "worn't you spakin' about her?"

"Was I?" said she, "maybe so--what was I sayin'?"

She then put her hand to her forehead, as if she felt pain and
confusion; after which she waved the nurse towards her, but on the woman
stooping down, she seemed to forget that she had beckoned to her at all.

At this moment Mave and her mother entered, and after looking towards
the bed on which she lay, they inquired in a whisper, from her attendant
how she was.

The woman pointed hopelessly to her own head, and then looked
significantly at Sarah, as if to intimate that her brain was then
unsettled.

"There's something wrong here," she added, in an under tone, and
touching her head, "especially since I tould her what had happened."

"Is she acquainted with everything?" asked her mother.

"She is," replied the other; "she knows that her father is to die on
Friday an' that you swore agin' him."

"But what on earth," said Mave, "could make you be so mad as to let her
know anything of that kind?"

"Why, she sent me to get word," replied the simple creature, "and you
wouldn't have me tell her a lie, an' the poor girl on her death-bed, I'm
afeard."

Her mother went over and stood opposite where she lay, that is, near the
foot of her bed, and putting one hand under her chin, looked at her
long and steadily. Mave went to her side and taking her hand gently up,
kissed it, and wept quietly, but bitterly.

It was, indeed, impossible to look upon her without a feeling of
deep and extraordinary interest. Her singularly youthful aspect--her
surprising beauty, to which disease and suffering had given a character
of purity and tenderness almost etherial--the natural symmetry and
elegance of her very arms and hands--the wonderful whiteness of her
skin, which contrasted so strikingly with the raven black of her glossy
hair, and the soul of thought and feeling which lay obviously expressed
by the long silken eye-lashes of her closed eyes--all, when taken in at
a glance,