"Yes, I dare say!" returned Mrs. Thorpe. "You go to bed, and don't let me hear your voice again this night. Do you go to bed too, my dear young ladies, and don't forget the poor woman in your prayers, for she needs them, if ever distressed creature did."
"Let us say the Litany of the Holy Virgin for her!" said I, when we were alone together.
Amabel was not quite sure, whether or no it would be right to do so for a heretic; but at last she agreed, and we went through it devoutly enough, addressing the Lord's mother in a way that seems to me now to be sheer idolatry.
I was a long time falling asleep, for when the necessity for action was over, I found out for the first time that I had been scared; and though I did not have a fit of the nerves like Betty, I started at every sound, and strained my ears to hear every movement in the other part of the house. It was not till cock-crowing that I fairly fell asleep.
Nevertheless, I waked rather early. The house was very still, and a late robin was singing sweetly in the garden. I could hear some one stepping about softly now and then, but that was all.
I dressed and opened our parlor door. That of the room opposite was open, as was also the window, which I rather wondered to see. The room way very neat, and Mrs. Thorpe worn from her vigil, and with traces of tears on her bright face, was just drawing the snowy curtains together.
As she caught my eye, she beckoned me, and as I came to her side, she softly parted them again, and turned down a fine white sheet which covered the bed. There lay the poor woman; her marble face beautiful with the peacefully joyful smile of death, and oh me—on her arm lay like a little waxen image—a dead baby.
"Is it not a pitiful sight?" said the good woman. "The babe was born about daybreak, and for a little, we hoped it might live, but it just breathed long enough to be christened, poor little dear, and its last sigh passed away with its mother's. She had her senses to the last, and I warrant you, it was a pitiful thing to hear how she strove to comfort her husband, and prayed for those who had brought her to this pass. I will never say a word about the Methodists again."
I have seen many a sorrowful sight in my day, but never I think one which touched me like that.
As I thought of Lord Bulmer with his languid fine gentleman airs, and remembered how he had set on the mob to murder these innocent creatures, my heart was like to burst with grief and indignation. I was to hate him worse before I had done with him.