The curse of gold

by Ann S. Stephens

Catharine bent over Elsie, smiling.

“You see the child does not call her mother!”

“Don’t he? No; that is true; she is only the nurse. Take him away, he must have a bath, you know; nurse, you will see to it.”

Even as Elsie said this, however, the strength went out from her limbs, a delicious shiver ran through her whole frame, and as if the breath inhaled from those rosy lips had been a sweet poison, she breathed a sigh, and her head sunk slowly to the floor. Her hands dropped loose from the child, and she lay among the billowy folds of her white robe and crimson shawl, pale as snow, but with a smile of ineffable joy upon her face. The draught of life she had drank from those warm, half-parted lips was stealing like an elixir through her veins.

“Let us take the child away now!” said Catharine, stooping gently down and lifting the boy from the cushions, where Elsie’s helplessness had left him.

“God bless the dear little fellow, he has made her smile,” said the old man, looking from Edward to the white face of his daughter, while his features, usually so placid, quivered with a rush of affection. “Look at her, mother. When did she smile so naturally before?”

“But how white she is,” said the dear, old lady, full of tender anxiety; “if it were not for the smile, it would seem like death!”

“But the smile, look at it! Since the day we saw that face under its wedding-veil, white as it is now, but so happy, she has never looked like that,” said the old man.

“But what if it were death?” answered the old lady, constantly rendered anxious by any change that fell upon her daughter, who, spite of her sorrow and gray hair, always seemed a child to her. “I have heard that those who suffer most on earth often look happy as angels the moment they cease to breathe. Tell me, husband, tell me,” she continued, clasping her hands with sudden affright, “is this sleep or death?”

“Neither,” said Catharine, who had resigned the boy to his mother, and was kneeling beside Elsie. “She is insensible, that is all; a little effort will bring her to.”