“Please, ma’am, don’t cry,” said the little girl feebly; “you were very good to me. Please tell me of my Saviour,” she added to Rachel. It sounded like set phraseology, and she knew not how to begin; but Dr. Macvicar’s answer made the lightened look come back, and the child was again heard to whisper—“Ah! I knew they scourged Him—for me.”
This was the last they did hear, except the sobbing breaths, ever more convulsive. Rachel had never before been present with death, and awe and dismay seemed to paralyse her whole frame. Even the words of hope and prayer for which the child’s eyes craved from both her fellow-watchers seemed to her a strange tongue, inefficient to reach the misery of this untimely mortal agony, this work of neglect and cruelty—and she the cause.
Three o’clock had struck before the last painful gasp had been drawn, and Mrs. Kelland’s sobbing cry broke forth. Dr. Macvicar told Rachel that the child was at rest. She shivered from head to foot, her teeth chattered, and she murmured, “Accountable for all.”
Dr. Macvicar at once made her swallow some of the cordial brought for the poor child, and then summoning the maid whom Grace had stationed in the outer room, he desired her to put her young mistress to bed without loss of time. The sole remaining desire of which she was conscious was to be alone and in the dark, and she passively submitted.
CHAPTER XX. THE SARACEN’S HEAD.
“Alas, he thought, how changed that mien,
How changed those timid looks have been,
Since years of guilt and of disguise
Have steeled her brow and armed her eyes.”
Marmion.
“Are you sleepy, Rose? What a yawn!”
“Not sleepy, Aunt Ailie; only it is such a tiresome long day when the Colonel does not come in.”
“Take care, Rosie; I don’t know what we shall be good for at this rate.”