"Father, father! what is the matter? What have I done?"
He laid his hand heavily on the paper, and bent his white face toward her.
"Jessie Lee, you have slandered the father that loved you better than his own life. You have killed your mother!"
CHAPTER LXI.
THE DEPARTING GUEST.
They were gone, and a gloom like that of the grave fell on everything in that room. While Jessie Lee lay cold and insensible on my bosom, smitten to the heart by her father's denunciation, Mrs. Dennison took the letter from Mr. Lee and read it from end to end. After that she uttered some words which I did not understand—for the cold head upon my bosom had frozen up my faculties—and went her way from the room, and oh! thank my God! from our presence, I prayed inly, forever and ever.
I do not know when or how Mr. Lee left the room, but I was alone with Jessie, and she dead, for the moment, as if in her winding-sheet.
I had no strength to lift her, or remove her from the room, but I laid her gently on the carpet, and, taking the crimson pillows from a couch, rested her head upon them. All this had been done with great quietness; no unusually loud word had been spoken during that terrible scene—not a soul in the house, except us four, knew that anything had happened.
Striving to subdue my agitation, I went up-stairs in search of restoratives. The crystal flasks in poor Mrs. Lee's chamber had never been emptied of their contents, so I went there hoping to find something that would bring the stricken girl out of her deathly sleep.