“Do not continue if it pains you so,” Arthur cried, with keen sympathy; but she checked a rising sob, and continued:
“I have been most bitterly bereaved, for when only eight months a bride, my dear mother was taken from me by an attack of heart failure. Her death was very sudden, and without premonition. She was gathering some flowers to take to the cemetery to place on the graves of her husband and children, when she suddenly fell forward, and expired painlessly among the roses.
“It was a cruel blow, but I bore it bravely, because I knew that she was reunited to her dear ones gone before, and I had my dear Richard left to comfort me, besides the hope of a future blessing.”
Again that heavy sigh from the depths of a burdened heart, whose agony had been almost unendurable. Then she took up the thread of her story again, murmuring:
“I was so young; and I loved my husband so dearly, and he made me so blissfully happy, that I was getting over my mother’s loss just a little, when two months later—oh, Heaven, only two months later—God took away my Richard!”
Again her voice broke, and she remained sad and silent until she could regain it, then went on:
“On a trip away from home, in the interest of some intending land buyers, he was killed instantly in a railroad wreck. Oh, my God! how did I live through that sorrow? Only, by Thine infinite grace and love, and the hope of that which was coming to me soon to fill the void of my two sudden and awful bereavements. I almost went mad at first, and I prayed for death to remove me from the life that was now only misery.
“But kind friends and neighbors took charge of me. I was placed in the care of a noble physician and skillful nurse. The days dragged on in illness, wretchedness, and rebellion until I had been widowed six weeks, then God sent me a child to love—a little dark-eyed daughter.
“At first I was disappointed with my fate, I had so longed for a boy to bear Richard’s name and to grow up in his image. But kind friends soothed me, and I grew to dote on my lovely babe. But nothing was to be left me to love, it seemed, for when baby, as I called her, not having chosen a name yet, was only a month old, I woke up one night, missing the little darling from my arms, and crying out in alarm.
“Alas! she too was gone, and so was the nurse who slept on a cot in my room. She had stolen baby, for what purpose I can not guess, and gone away, and so carefully had she covered her flight, that after spending every dollar of my little competency in the vain effort to trace her, not a single clew was gained.”