backwards, and she struggled back to life.
Soon, as is usual in cases of such disease, dropsy intervened, with all
its weariness of discomfort, and for week after week her long martyrdom
dragged on. I nursed her night and day, with a very desperation of
tenderness, for now fate had touched the thing that was dearest to me in
life. A second horrible crisis came, and for the second time her tenacity
and my love beat back the death-stroke. She did not wish to die--the love
of life was strong in her; I would not let her die; between us we kept
the foe at bay.

At this period, after eighteen months of abstention, and for the last
time, I took the Sacrament. This statement will seem strange to my
readers, but the matter happened in this wise:

My dear mother had an intense longing to take it, but absolutely refused
to do so unless I partook of it with her.

"If it be necessary to salvation," she persisted doggedly, "I will not
take it if darling Annie is to be shut out. I would rather be lost with
her than saved without her." In vain I urged that I could not take it
without telling the officiating clergyman of my heresy, and that under
such circumstances the clergyman would be sure to refuse to administer to
me. She insisted that she could not die happy if she did not take it with
me. I went to a clergyman I knew well, and laid the case before him; as I
expected, he refused to allow me to communicate. I tried a second; the
result was the same. I was in despair; to me the service was foolish and
superstitious, but I would have done a great deal more for my mother than
eat bread and drink wine, provided that the eating and drinking did not,
by pretence of faith on my part, soil my honesty. At last a thought
struck me; there was Dean Stanley, my mother's favorite, a man known to
be of the broadest school within the Church of England; suppose I asked
him? I did not know him, though as a young child I had known his sister
as my mother's friend, and I felt the request would be something of an
impertinence. Yet there was just the chance that he might consent, and
then my darling's death-bed would be the easier. I told no one, but set
out resolutely for the Deanery, Westminster, timidly asked for the Dean,
and followed the servant upstairs with a very sinking heart. I was left
for a moment alone in the library, and then the Dean came in. I don't
think I ever in my life felt more intensely uncomfortable than I did in
that minute's i