of her
position as affected her health and comfort. She thought it was that
consumption which, sooner or later, she believed must be her fate, which
he was anticipating with so much compassion. She was blind to the far
more dreadful dangers which surrounded her.

Poor Mrs. Saunders! At last it could no longer be concealed from her.
She must die.

He broke the intelligence to her in the gentlest terms, as she, at last,
in a paroxysm of terror, asked the question; giving her what hope he
could, but still not denying that she stood in a fearful strait. It was
a terrible scene that followed. Such a frightful agitation and hurry to
accomplish in a few counted hours what ought to have been the business
of a life. Such calling for psalms and prayers; such piteous beseechings
for help; and, last of all, such an awful awakening of a slumbering
conscience.

Like Richard's bed, on the eve of Bosworth fight, it seemed as if the
spectral shadows of all those she had injured in the body or the soul,
by her unerring demands upon one, and her negligence as to the other,
rose a host of dismal spectres round. Their pale, exhausted, pleading
looks, as she scolded and threatened, when the clock struck one, and the
task was yet undone, and the head for a moment dropped, and the
throbbing fingers were still. Those hollow coughs in which she would
_not_ believe--those hectic flushes that she would not see--and worse,
those walks, those letters, at which she had connived, because the girls
did so much better when they had some nonsense to amuse them.

What fearful revelations were made as she raved aloud, or sank into a
drowsy, dreary delirium The old clergyman, who attended her, consoled,
and reasoned, and prayed in vain. The two young people--that lovely
girl, and that feeling, interesting, young man--stood by the bed
appalled: he, ghastly pale--pale with an agony of despairing pity--she,
trembling in every limb.

The death agony, and then that poor woman went to her account. There was
no one in the room but themselves; it was late in the night, the
morning, indeed, began faintly to dawn. The maids were all gone to bed,
glad enough to escape the scene. He stood silently watching the
departing breath. It stopped. He gave a deep sigh, and, stooping down,
piously closed the eyes. She had turned away in horror and in dread, but
shedding some natural tears. He stood looking at her some time, as there
she stood, weeping by the bed; at last