The physician's eyes dwelt on Mildred's pale face in strong admiration as he gave her a few directions. "That's right, Millie, make her well for mercy's sake or I'll have the horrors," Belle whispered as she kissed her sister good-night.
Soon Clara and Mildred were alone watching the gasping, fitful sleeper. "After all that's been done—for me—to-night I'll—surely get well," she had murmured, and she closed her eyes without an apparent doubt of recovery.
Mildred furtively expiorea the now dimly lighted room. "Merciful Heaven," she sighed, "shall we ever come to this?" Clara's eyes were fixed on her mother's face with pathetic intensity, watching the glimmer of that mysterious thing we call life, that flickered more and more faintly. The difference between the wasted form, with its feeble animation, and what it must soon become would seem slight, but to the daughter it would be wide indeed. Love could still answer love, even though it was by a sign, a glance, a whisper only; but when to the poor girl it would be said of her mother, "She's gone," dim and fading as the presence had been, manifested chiefly by the burdens it imposed, its absence would bring the depths of desolation and sorrow.
Going the poor creature evidently was, and whither? The child she was leaving knew little of what was bright and pleasant in this world, and nothing of the next. "Miss Jocelyn," she began hesitatingly.
"Don't call me Miss Jocelyn; I'm a working-girl like yourself."
"Millie, then, as Belle said?"
"Yes."
"Millie, do you believe in a heaven?"
"Yes."
"What is it like?"