s of regret and self-reproach.

"Charles Lennox loved me," thought she, "truly, tenderly loved me; and
had I but repaid his noble frankness--had I suffered him to read my
heart when he laid his open before me, I might now have gladdened the
last days of the mother he adores. I might have proudly avowed that
affection I must now forever hide."

But at the end of some weeks Mrs. Lennox was no longer susceptible of
emotions either of joy or sorrow. She gradually sank into a state of
almost total insensibility, from which not even the arrival of her son
had power to rouse her. His anguish was extreme at finding his mother in
a condition so perfectly hopeless; and every other idea seemed, for the
present, absorbed in his anxiety for her. As Mary witnessed his watchful
cares and tender solicitude, she could almost have envied the
unconscious object of such devoted attachment.

A few days after his arrival his leave of absence was abruptly recalled,
and he was summoned to repair to headquarters with all possible
expedition. The army was on the move, and a battle was expected to be
fought. At such a time hesitation or delay, under any circumstances,
would have been inevitable disgrace; and, dreadful as was the
alternative, Colonel Lennox wavered not an instant in his resolution.
With a look of fixed agony, but without uttering a syllable, he put the
letter into Mary's hand as she sat by his mother's bedside, and then
left the room to order preparations to be made for his instant
departure. On his return Mary witnessed the painful conflict of his
feelings in his extreme agitation as he approached his mother, to look
for the last time on those features, already moulded into more than
mortal beauty. A bright ray of the setting sun streamed full upon that
face, now reposing in the awful but hallowed calm which is sometimes
diffused around the bed of death. The sacred stillness was only broken
by the evening song of the blackbird and the distant lowing of the
cattle--sounds which had often brought pleasure to that heart, now
insensible to all human emotion. All nature shone forth in gaiety and
splendour, but the eye and the ear were alike closed against all earthly
objects. Yet who can tell the brightness of those visions with which the
parting soul may be visited? Sounds and sights, alike unheard, unknown
to mortal sense, may then hold divine communion with the soaring spirit,
and inspire it with bliss inconceivable, ineffable!