The nurse was relieved by this sound. It gave her time for breath. The rustle of her own dress seemed less startling. She turned to the other bed, stooped over it still more cautiously, and laid her hand down upon the heart of the senseless woman.
She half rose, gave a sharp glance over her shoulder, and taking each of the fair hands, clasped so fondly around a sleeping infant, forced them gently apart, and lifted the child from its mother’s bosom.
A shudder passed through the frame of that young mother, as if the last gleam of life had been torn from her heart. Her eyelids quivered, and her lips were, for an instant, faintly convulsed.
The nurse turned suddenly to the other couch, and back again, while this life-struggle was going on. Without unclosing her eyes, the poor creature reached forth her arms, clasped them fondly again with a sigh of ineffable delight, and sunk away motionless, without a perceptible breath.
But it was not for joy. As the child, a moment before, had seemed to keep the vitality in her heart with its own warmth, so now some outward chill drove back the blood to its centre. With a moan, and a struggle, she came to life, opened her great blue eyes, and fixed them wildly on the nurse.
“I am cold, oh! so cold,” she said, shivering, and cowering down into the bed; “what have you done to me?”
“Done to you?” said the nurse, faintly, “done to you? Nothing, but try my best to bring you to. Why, it’s almost dead you’ve been, I don’t know how long.”
The invalid did not hear this. A momentary impulse of strength seized upon her. She flung back the bed-clothes, and bending her face downward, fixed those wild eyes upon the child. One glance, and she lifted them with a sharp, questioning look to the woman, and passing her hand over the little face, whispered hoarsely,—
“What is this?”
The nurse put her hands down and touched the infant. The poor mother felt those coarse hands shaking against her own, and shrunk away with a faint cry: it seemed as if they had inflicted a wound upon her.