the home where she now dwells."

She spoke slowly and earnestly, but her words were of despair not of
grief. Motioning to the old woman that she desired no further
conversation, Mrs. Wentworth again fixed her gaze upon the dead
features of her child. On them she looked, until the tablet of her
memory contained but one impress, that of her daughter's face. All
records of past suffering, all anxiety for the present, all prayer for
the future, were driven away, and solitary and alone the image of the
dead child filled their place, and in that lone thought was
concentrated all that had transpired in her life for months past. It
was the last remaining bulwark to her tottering mind, and though it
still held reason dominant, the foundation of sanity had been shaken
to such an extent that the slightest touch and the fabric would fall
from its throne and crumble to dust at the feet of madness. But this
was unknown to God. He who knoweth all things still kept his eyes away
from the mother and her children.

"Dead! dead!" said, Mrs. Wentworth, swaying her body to and fro. "My
angel child dead! Oh, God!"' she continued, passing her hand across
her brow. "That I should live to see this day, that this hour of
bereavement should ever be known to me. Oh! that this should be the
result of my sufferings, that this should be the only reward of my
toils and prayers."

The blood rushed to her face, and her whole form trembled with an
uncontrollable agitation; her bosom heaved with emotion, and the
beatings of her heart were heard as plain as the click of the clock on
the mantlepiece. Stooping over the dead body she clasped it in her
arms, and pressed the bloodless and inanimate lips in a fond embrace.
It was the promptings of a mother's heart. She had nursed the child
when an infant, and had seen her grow up as beautiful as the fairies
so often described by the writers of fiction. She had looked forward
for the day when the child would bloom into womanhood, and be a
blessing and a comfort in her old age. All these were now forever
blighted. Not even the presence of her son awoke a thought within her
that the living remained to claim her care and affection. He was but a
link in the chain of her paternal love, and the bonds having been
broken she looked on the shattered fragment and sought not to unite
what yet remained in an unhurt state.

When she rose from her stooping posture her face had resumed its cold
and rigid appearance. Turnin