'Aye sure,' cried the woman, 'she looks like a lady for certain, and she has the finest child I ever saw.'
'Perhaps she is not dead,' said Mrs Mowbray:—'let us go see.'
CHAPTER XXIX
Little did Mrs Mowbray think that it was her own child whom she was hastening to relieve; and that, while meditating a kind action, recompense was so near.
Adeline, while trying to finish her letter to her mother, had scarcely traced a few illegible lines, when she fell back insensible on her pillow; and at the moment of Mrs Mowbray's entering the cottage, Savanna, who had uttered the shriek which had excited her curiosity, had convinced herself that she was gone for ever.
The woman who accompanied Mrs Mowbray entered the house first; and opening a back chamber, low-roofed, narrow, and lighted only by one solitary and slender candle, Mrs Mowbray, beheld through the door the lifeless form of the object of her solicitude, which Savanna was contemplating with loud and frantic sorrow.
'Here is a lady come to see what she can do for your mistress,' cried the woman, while Savanna turned hastily round:—'Here she is—here is good Madam Mowbray.'
'Madam Mowbray!' shrieked Savanna, fixing her dark eyes on Mrs Mowbray, and raising her arm in a threatening manner as she approached her: then snatching up the letter which lay on the bed,—'Woman!' she exclaimed, grasping Mrs Mowbray's arm with frightful earnestness, 'read that—'tis for you!'
Mrs Mowbray, speechless with alarm and awe, involuntarily seized the letter—but scarcely had she read the first words, when uttering a deep groan she sprung forward, to clasp the unconscious form before her, and fell beside it equally insensible.