This thought ran through her burning brain, and trembled wildly on her tongue. Her husband—her husband—he could not come to her, and she must go to him. But the two little girls—they appeared to her like guards—great gaunt creatures dressed in fantastic uniform, stationed by her bed to coerce and frighten her. They held her back; they seemed to smother her in the bed-clothes, and gird her head down to the pillow with the hot clasp of their united hands. Those two little creatures became to her an object of terrible dread. She longed for strength to tear them down from the towering altitude which her imagination gave, and blindfold them, as they, in her wild fancy, had blindfolded her with their scorching hands.
She saw little Mary Fuller put on her hood and go forth with a thrill of insane delight. That wild, uncouth form had seemed far more terrible than the other, and yet now the petite figure of her own child seemed to rise and swell over her like a fiend.
"Ice—ice!"
She knew, in her delirium, that this cry sometimes sent her dreaded jailors from the room. If they were absent, she could find her clothes—she could steal softly down stairs, and away after him.
"Ice—ice!" she cried, "I will drink nothing unless the ice rattles in the glass—cold, cold. It must be cold as death, I say."
Isabel rose up in terror, and taking their last sixpence, went forth for the ice. Then the mother laughed beneath the bedclothes—alone, all alone. She started up—tore off her cap and her night-dress, and thrust her unstockinged feet in a pair of slippers that stood near the bed.
Several dresses hung in the room. With her eager and burning hands she took them down, cast all but one on the floor, and put that on, laughing low and dismally all the while. A bandbox stood at the foot of the bed. She crept to it, took out a bonnet, and drew it with her trembling hands over the disordered masses of her hair, which she tried vainly to smooth with her hot palms. Strong with fever, wild with apprehension that her guard might return, the poor woman arose to her feet, and after steadying herself by the door-frame awhile, staggered from the room down the stairs and into the broad city.
Filled with the one idea, that of finding her husband, she passed on, turning a corner—another, pausing now and then by an iron railing, to which she clung, with a desperate effort to keep herself upright.
Many persons saw her as she passed, reeling in her walk, and with her sweet face flushed crimson; but, alas! these sights are not uncommon in our city, from causes far more heart-rending than illness, and with passing wonder that a person of her appearance should be thus exposed at mid-day. Those who noticed her went by, some smiling in scorn, others filled with such pity as the truly good feel for erring humanity. But the poor invalid tottered forward, unconscious of their pity or their scorn. She had but one object—one fixed thought among all the wild ideas that floated through her brain—her husband. She was in search of him, and, in her fever-strength, she walked on and on, murmuring his name over and over to herself, as a lost child mutters the name of its parents.
At last, her strength gave way. She was upon a broad sidewalk, to which the granite steps swept down from many a lordly mansion. Her head reeled; the sunshine fell upon her eyes like sparks of fire; she clung to an iron balustrade, swung half round with a feeble effort to sustain herself, and sunk upon the pavement, moaning as she fell.