At length, however, she did reach it:—and the lawn before Mrs Mowbray's white house, her hay-fields, and the running stream at the bottom of it, burst in all their beauty on her view.—'And this is my mother's dwelling!' exclaimed Adeline: 'and there was I born: and near here—' shall I die, she would have added, but her voice failed her.
'Oh! what a pretty house and garden!' cried Editha in the unformed accents of childhood;—'how I should like to live there!'
This artless remark awakened a thousand mixed and overpowering feelings in the bosom of Adeline; and, after a pause of strong emotion, she exclaimed, catching the little prattler to her heart—'you shall live there, my child!—yes, yes, you shall live there!'
'But when?' resumed Editha.
'When I am in my grave,' answered Adeline.
'And when shall you be there?' replied the unconscious child, fondly caressing her: 'pray, mamma—pray be there soon!'
Adeline turned away, unable to answer her.
'Look—look, mamma!'—resumed Editha: 'there are ladies.—Oh! do let us go there now!—why can't we?'
'Would to God we could!' replied Adeline; as in one of the ladies she recognized Mrs Mowbray, and stood gazing on her till her eyes ached again: but what she felt on seeing her she will herself describe in the succeeding pages: and I shall only add, that, as soon as Mrs Mowbray returned into the house, Adeline, wrapped in a long and mournful reverie, returned, full of a new plan, to her lodgings.
There is no love so disinterested as parental love; and Adeline had all the keen sensibilities of a parent. To make, therefore, 'assurance doubly sure' that Mrs Mowbray should receive and should love her orphan when she was no more, she resolved to give up the gratification to which she had looked forward, the hope, before she died, of obtaining her forgiveness—that she might not weaken, by directing any part of them to herself, those feelings of remorse, fruitless tenderness, and useless regret in her mother's bosom, which she wished should be concentrated on her child.