"Oh, may I not bless her before I leave her forever?" she cried to stern Resolution. And Conscience rejoined, with meaning severity: "Is it you who would breathe a blessing above her purity?"
"Suffer me, then, to take the farewell look I dared not grant myself before!"
And while Resolution faltered at the impassioned appeal, she opened the nursery door and stole to the side of the crib. The night-lamp shed a feeble halo over the table whereon it stood. The rest of the room was in darkness. Mary's light bedstead was close to the crib. Was hers that hard, short breathing, that sent a start and chill through the hearer? A touch to the lamp threw a blaze of light over nurse and child. A sharp cry rang through the chamber.
"Mary, Mary! get up!"
The girl sprang to the floor before she comprehended the meaning of the alarm. Mrs. Hammond had sunk into a chair beside the crib, from which she had snatched her infant. Baby Belle's head was strained back; her hands clenched; her limbs stiffened in a death-like spasm. The eyes were rolled out of sight under the lids; and the four little teeth—her "most precious pearls," the fond mother had called them—were hard-locked within the purple lips.
Terrified as she was, Mary had the presence of mind to run for assistance. Mrs. Hunt and a physician were soon on the spot, and every appliance of the healing art that promised relief to the sufferer was used, but with partial effect. Sarah saw nothing but the child; heard nothing but the doctor's calm orders.
"You do not try to help her!" she said, impatiently, as a convulsion, more fearful than any that had preceded it, seized the delicate frame.
"I could not do more, were it my own child, madam!"
He was an elderly man, whose charity for fashionable mothers was very scant, and, having seen Mrs. Hammond in the ball-room the evening before, he was not prepared for the solicitude she manifested.
"You had better let the nurse take her!" he said, more gently, as Sarah, with difficulty, held down the struggling hands that might do hurt to the head and face.