Oh, the curse of poverty! How it goaded the poor mother's heart!
Too poor to spend a penny in search of the beloved only child who had met such a mysterious fate, alone in the world, and almost friendless, she journeyed sorrowfully back to Richmond, only to find that a fire on the previous night had destroyed the cottage where her furniture was stored, and that she had no shelter for her head and no work for her hands. Was it any wonder her poor brain went wild?
CHAPTER XXVII.
IT SEEMED LIKE SOME BEAUTIFUL DREAM WHEN SHE ENTERED THE GATES IN THE CHILLY SUNSET OF A WINDY OCTOBER DAY.
"Thank Heaven! the crisis,
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last—
The fever called 'Living'
Is conquered at last!"
The day came, late in September, when the autumn leaves were turning red and gold, that Dainty Chase opened wide her startled blue eyes upon the world again.
She had closed them consciously over six weeks ago in the gloomy dungeon beneath Ellsworth Castle, when, pressing to her desperate lips the bitter draught of death, she had bidden the cruel world farewell.
In the long weeks of illness and delirium that followed, many things had come and gone without her knowledge; and now, when consciousness returned again; there was a dazed look in the beautiful pansy-blue eyes that stared wide and dark out of her wan and wasted face, with the blue veins wandering plainly beneath the transparent skin.
"Where am I?" she gasped, faintly, putting her weak little hands up to her head, and wondering in a bewildered way what made her hair feel so thin and short and curly, like that of a year-old infant.