laced in Bridgenorth's arms the infant
whose birth had cost him so dear, and conjured him to remember that his
Alice was not yet dead, since she survived in the helpless child she had
left to his paternal care.

"Take her away--take her away!" said the unhappy man, and they were the
first words he had spoken; "let me not look on her--it is but another
blossom that has bloomed to fade, and the tree that bore it will never
flourish more!"

He almost threw the child into Lady Peveril's arms, placed his
hands before his face, and wept aloud. Lady Peveril did not say "be
comforted," but she ventured to promise that the blossom should ripen to
fruit.

"Never, never!" said Bridgenorth; "take the unhappy child away, and let
me only know when I shall wear black for her--Wear black!" he exclaimed,
interrupting himself, "what other colour shall I wear during the
remainder of my life?"

"I will take the child for a season," said Lady Peveril, "since the
sight of her is so painful to you; and the little Alice shall share the
nursery of our Julian, until it shall be pleasure and not pain for you
to look on her."

"That hour will never come," said the unhappy father; "her doom is
written--she will follow the rest--God's will be done.--Lady, I thank
you--I trust her to your care; and I thank God that my eye shall not see
her dying agonies."

Without detaining the reader's attention longer on this painful theme,
it is enough to say that the Lady Peveril did undertake the duties of
a mother to the little orphan; and perhaps it was owing, in a great
measure, to her judicious treatment of the infant, that its feeble hold
of life was preserved, since the glimmering spark might probably have
been altogether smothered, had it, like the Major's former children,
undergone the over-care and over-nursing of a mother rendered nervously
cautious and anxious by so many successive losses. The lady was the more
ready to undertake this charge, that she herself had lost two infant
children; and that she attributed the preservation of the third, now a
fine healthy child of three years old, to Julian's being subjected to
rather a different course of diet and treatment than was then generally
practised. She resolved to follow the same regiment with the little
orphan, which she had observed in the case of her own boy; and it was
equally successful. By a more sparing use of medicine, by a bolder
admission of fresh air, by a firm, yet cautious attenti