She turned from the picture at length, shaking her head wearily, as if the struggle for memory had worn her out. Then her eyes fell upon the other portrait, the handsome, bright-looking man who had left so strange an impression upon Catharine.
Her eyes grew larger; her lips parted, and with a long, breathless gaze she sunk slowly to the floor, like a snow-wreath touched by the sun.
Catharine arose and bent over the prostrate woman.
“Elsie, dear Elsie, speak to me!”
There was a movement of the white drapery, and a low moan.
“They are together; they two together yet, and I, oh, me—oh, me!”
She did not lift her head again, but went trembling and drooping from the library, moaning all the way.
CHAPTER XLI.
NURSES FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR.
I must go back a year or two, and take up an event, which happened during Catharine’s sojourn in the Insane Asylum.
An old man, gray-haired, and with a most bland countenance, cordial and ruddy, lighted by those soft chestnut-brown eyes that are always so pleasant of expression, sat behind his desk in the Almshouse building at the Park. It was visiting-day in his department, when all the orphan infants, put out to nurse by the city, were expected to be brought to the office for inspection, or for such changes as time made necessary.