“Oh, yes, sir, so she was; else I certainly would have sat up with her. Oh, I wish I had! I wish I had! I would give my life now to have done it. Oh, my poor mother! my poor dear mother. I slept on by your side and let you die—die alone, without help, without even a word of love. Oh, my mother!” cried the girl, utterly losing her self-command, and weeping and sobbing and raving as if her heart would break or her brain madden.
Alexander let the wild gust of sorrow spend its strength, and then he said:
“Drusilla, if you had been sitting by your mother’s bed, gazing on her sleeping face, you would never have suspected that she was dying and never known the moment of her death. My child, she had a fatal malady of the brain that was certain to end just as it did. She passed away peacefully in her sleep. Hers was an easy death. Drusilla, do not add causeless regrets to natural grief with these ifs. Nearly all persons do so, however. I never knew any one to die whose mourning friends did not add irrational remorse to rational sorrow by the means of these ifs. If we had done this; if we had not done that; if such a doctor had been called, or such a remedy administered. These retrospective ifs are illusions. Do not let them deceive you.”
These words he spoke, while with a gentle mesmeric touch he smoothed her hair and her brow, and held her head close to his bosom.
She had neither the power nor the will to leave her resting-place; but her wild weeping softened into low sobs, that became fewer and farther between, until at last they ceased entirely.
Alexander looked down and saw that she was fast asleep.
Like a baby she had cried herself to sleep on his sheltering bosom. She was no longer pale; her long-curved eye-lashes, gemmed with tears, lay on her flushed cheeks, and her slightly crimson lips showed the little pearly teeth within; her dark brown disordered hair fell around a forehead and down a neck as white as ivory.
Even in that solemn hour, Alexander, looking down upon her, loved her for her wondrous beauty, seen in its new phase of sleep.
But he had grace to know that such feelings were sacrilege against this pure maiden and sacred orphan; and so he gently arose and crossed the room to a large sofa and laid her on it. And then he touched the bell.
Dorset answered it.