ner, for I wanted to
recall the clear sense that I felt almost sure she had possessed in her
younger days, and by keeping up her attention to details, restrain the
vague wildness of her grief.

She listened with deep attention, putting from time to time such
questions as convinced me I had to do with no common intelligence,
however dimmed and shorn by solitude and mysterious sorrow. Then she
took up her tale; and in few brief words, told me of her wanderings
abroad in vain search after her daughter; sometimes in the wake of
armies, sometimes in camp, sometimes in city. The lady, whose
waiting-woman Mary had gone to be, had died soon after the date of her
last letter home; her husband, the foreign officer, had been serving in
Hungary, whither Bridget had followed him, but too late to find him.
Vague rumours reached her that Mary had made a great marriage; and this
sting of doubt was added,--whether the mother might not be close to her
child under her new name, and even hearing of her every day, and yet
never recognising the lost one under the appellation she then bore. At
length the thought took possession of her, that it was possible that
all this time Mary might be at home at Coldholme, in the Trough of
Bolland, in Lancashire, in England; and home came Bridget, in that vain
hope, to her desolate hearth, and empty cottage. Here she had thought
it safest to remain; if Mary was in life, it was here she would seek
for her mother.

I noted down one or two particulars out of Bridget's narrative that I
thought might be of use to me; for I was stimulated to further search
in a strange and extraordinary manner. It seemed as if it were
impressed upon me, that I must take up the quest where Bridget had laid
it down; and this for no reason that had previously influenced me (such
as my uncle's anxiety on the subject, my own reputation as a lawyer,
and so on), but from some strange power which had taken possession of
my will only that very morning, and which forced it in the direction it
chose.

'I will go,' said I. 'I will spare nothing in the search. Trust to me.
I will learn all that can be learnt. You shall know all that money, or
pains, or wit can discover. It is true she may be long dead: but she
may have left a child.'

'A child!' she cried, as if for the first time this idea had struck her
mind. 'Hear him, Blessed Virgin! he says she may have left a child. And
you have never told me, though I have prayed so for a sign,