CHAPTER XLIV.
an ominous visit.
have sometimes felt that, even without a revelation, we might have discovered that the human race was born to immortality. Death is an intrusion here. Children can't believe in it. When they see it first, it strikes them with curiosity and wonder. It is a long time before they comprehend its real character, or believe that it is common to all; to the end of our days we are hardly quite sincere when we talk of our own deaths.
Seeing mamma better, I thought no more of her danger than if the angel of death had never been within our doors, and I had never seen the passing shadow of that spectre in her room.
As my strength returned, I grew more and more gloomy and excited. I was haunted by never-slumbering, and very reasonable, fore-castings of danger. In the first place, I was quite in the dark as to whether Monsieur Droqville was dangerously or mortally hurt, and I had no way of learning anything of him. Rebecca, it is true, used to take in, for her special edification, a Sunday paper, in which all the horrors of the week were displayed, and she used to con it over regularly, day after day, till the next number made its appearance. If Monsieur Droqville's name, with which she was familiar, had occurred in this odious register, she had at least had a fair chance of seeing it, and if she had seen it, she would be pretty sure to have mentioned it. Secretly, however, I was in miserable fear. Mr. Carmel had not returned since my recovery had ceased to be doubtful, and he was in possession of the weapon that had fallen from my hand.
In his retention of this damning piece of evidence, and his withdrawing himself so carefully from my presence, coupled with my knowledge of the principles that bound him to treat all private considerations, feelings, and friendships as non-existent, when they stood ever so little in the way of his all-pervading and supreme duty to his order—there was a sinister augury. I lived in secret terror; no wonder I was not recovering quickly.