It was not without considerable emotion that he supported me to that marble slab which now covered my mother as well as my child, and I caught some of his trembling agitation.
"Look there, my poor Helen!" said he.
I did look, and read the name of my child.
"Look lower yet."
I did so, and the words 'Julia Pendarves;' with the sad et cetera, met my view, and seemed to restore my shattered comprehension.
In a moment the whole agonizing truth rushed upon my mind; and throwing myself on the cold stone, I called upon my departed parent, and wept till I was deluged in tears, and had sobbed myself into the stillness of exhaustion.
"Thank God! thou art restored, my beloved, and all will yet, I trust, be well," said my husband as he bore me away.
From that time my memory returned, and with it so acute a feeling of what I had lost, that I fear I was ungrateful enough to regret my imbecility.
I now insisted on hearing details of all that had occurred since my illness; and I found that my uncle and aunt had come down to attend the funeral of my mother, and that Lord Charles had attended uninvited to pay her that tribute of respect, nor had he returned to London till my life was declared out of danger. How deeply I felt this attention! I also heard that the ladies at the Lodge pestered my husband with letters, to prevail on him to spare his sensibility the pain of following my lost parent to the grave: but that, however he shrunk from the task, he had treated their request with the utmost disregard, saying, that if he had no other motive, the certainty that he was doing what I should have wished, was sufficient.
When I was quite restored to strength, both of mind and body, Pendarves gave me the key of my mother's papers, which he had carefully sealed up. My mother left no will, as she wished me to inherit every thing; but in a little paper directed to Pendarves she desired that an income might be settled on Juan and Alice, which would make them comfortable and independent for life; that her friends the De Waldens might have some memorial of her given to them; and that Lord Charles might have her travelling writing-desk.