Her father’s blood, before her father’s face
Boil’d up, and prov’d her truly of his race.
—Byron.
A child was born.
In sobbing anguish, in cowering shame, in comparative privation, a little weeping, helpless, weak boy was ushered into life.
Oh! had that proud woman, the parent of the young mother, been present in that close chamber, where lay fainting the “flower of her flock,” her heartless pride must have received a blow which could scarcely have failed to prove beneficial to her humanity! It must surely have roused up some of those better feelings of womanly nature, of which none of the sex are wholly divested, unless they are lost indeed.
Upon a poorly furnished but clean bed lay stretched Helen Grahame, attended only by her ministering angel, Lotte Clinton.
The sudden and wholly unexpected interview with Lester Vane, the subsequent flight, with all its attendant anxieties, and apprehensions, and fatigues, all combined to do their work upon her weak frame.
At the expiration of three weeks, she was, however, so far recovered as to move about again; while Lotte was ill enough—although she would not acknowledge so much—to take her place in the bed Helen had quitted.
She had been Helen’s gentle nurse; and had attended her with patient, unwearying assiduity.