an inner
way, better than I could speak through the natural ear, I quietly
receded and left the apartment. As my eyes rested on her a moment, in
closing the door, I saw that her form remained as still as a statue.

CHAPTER XXIII.

An hour later, when Constance went to see Mrs. Dewey, she found her in
a state of unconsciousness, nature having at last given way. Not long
after I left the house, her mother, on entering the room where the
children were laid out, found her insensible, lying across the bed, with
her dead babes clasped in her arms.

Mrs. Floyd sent word for me to come and see her daughter, as she
continued in a lethargic state. I found her like one in a deep sleep,
only her breathing was light, and her pulse very feeble, but regular.
She was out of the reach of my skill, and in the hands of the Great
Physician. I could only trust the cure to Him. No medicine for the body
would be of any avail here. I called again in the afternoon; but found
no change. How little was there in the pale, pinched face that lay among
the white pillows, to remind me of the handsome, dashing Mrs. Dewey, of
a year gone by!

"What do you think of her, Doctor?"

Mrs. Floyd put the question. The tone had in it something that made me
look narrowly into the speaker's face. My ears had not deceived me.

There was the wish in her heart that Delia might die!

I was not surprised at this. And yet the revelation of such a state of
feeling, in so good and true a woman, as I had reason to know Mrs. Floyd
to be, made my heart bound with a throb of pain.

Alas! alas! Into what unnatural conditions may not the mind fall,
through suffering that shuts out human hope!

"Nature," said I, in answer to the question of Mrs. Floyd, "may be only
gathering up her powers after a long period of exhaustion. The strife
through which your daughter has passed--calmly passed to all external
seeming--has not been without a wasting of internal life. How she kept
on so evenly to the end, passes my comprehension. There is not one woman
in a thousand who could have so borne herself through to the final act.
It is meet that she should rest now."

"If she were sleeping with her babes, happy would it be for her!"

Tears fell over the face of Mrs. Floyd.

"God knows what is best," I remarked.

"She has nothing to live for in this world." A sob broke from its
repression, and heaved the mother's bosom. "O Doctor, if I saw the death
dews on her brow, I w