"Oh! do not be so harsh and cruel to me; your heart was soft enough once."
"It was. You have changed it, and are the first to feel its hardness. I am no longer what I was; but for my boy I should turn into a stone, or die."
"And I? What am I to do? If—if anything should happen to Bertie. Oh! I shall go mad," she cried. "Think of my grief then. I, who unwittingly gave him this fever; think what my heart would feel, what it even feels now; and be not so merciless."
"No, not half so merciless as your bad heart has been. I can give you no greater punishment than your own guilty remorse, and frightened heart. I will remain no longer, Miss Strickland. You shall not see my boy!"
And Amy left Frances weeping, perhaps the first genuine repentant tears she had ever shed.
Robert sat at his boy's bed-side all that night, cooling his burning forehead and heated head with the cold wet cloth dipped in vinegar and water, or holding him up in his arms while his poor parched lips feebly yet eagerly drank from the cup his mother held so tremblingly before him, while Frances alternately walked her room despairingly, or crouched away in the dark on the stairs near, her ear vainly trying to catch the words of those mournful watchers and nurses who stepped about so softly in the sick chamber beyond.
CHAPTER XII.
A FADING FLOWER.
"The coldness from my heart is gone, But still the weight is there, And thoughts which I abhor will come, And tempt me to despair.