Wives and Widows; or, The Broken Life

by Ann S. Stephens

"If it is something very pleasant, you shall have a new dress, Lottie."

This promise kept the girl on her knees, reading the face of her mistress with keen eagerness. She saw it change as if a flash of fire passed from neck to forehead; then a cold, gray tint settled over it so gradually, that no one could tell when it came.

Lottie sprang to her feet with a sharp cry.

Mrs. Lee had fainted—no, not that; no common fainting fit ever took a form so painful—a look of unutterable misery had settled on the face, impressive as the agony which has become immortal in the features of that marble father who strives to rescue his children from the writhing serpents in the Vatican.

Mrs. Lee had fallen sideway in her chair. The movement had been gradual, and accompanied the gray changes of her face with such stillness, that its meaning did not strike Lottie till she sprang up and uttered that cry.

We lifted the lady from her chair and laid her on the bed. She gave no sign of life, but seemed to be growing colder and colder. Lottie attempted to draw the letter from her hand, but her fingers clung to it with a tenacity which could not be forced without wounding the hand; so we left the paper in her grasp.

What we did I cannot tell. Everything that two frightened creatures could devise we attempted, in order to restore her; but it seemed to me an age before any sign of life returned.

At last a shiver passed over her, and, with her disengaged hand, she tore at the muslin over her bosom as if some pain were burning at her heart, and then I saw her poor lips redden for the first time—but it was with blood. Piteously she opened her eyes and looked into ours. She had not recovered then, nor did she remember what event had produced this illness.

I could tell when the first dawn of a recollection came upon her, for she rustled the letter in her hand as if to be sure it was there, and a reality; then the pain all came back to her features, and the blood came in heavier drops up from her broken heart.

They came back from a long ride while she lay thus. We had sent for the doctor, and sat by her in helpless grief, waiting his arrival. I went out to meet Jessie, intending to break the painful intelligence of her mother's attack to her with gentleness. She was coming up the steps with a harassed look. The weight of her skirts seemed to drag at her frail strength. Mrs. Dennison was lower down the steps, looking over her shoulder at Mr. Lee, and talking in a gay, excited manner that did not seem quite natural. Jessie looked upward, with a weary, sad glance as I came down the walk, and I saw that the company of this woman was oppressing her dreadfully.