"'To-morrow?'
"She shook her head.
"'Then take me, too. I will be a good boy—indeed I will. But don't go away and leave me.'
"'I can't take you, Gerard. Where I am going, you cannot come.' She tried to unclasp my clinging arms, but it was some time before she succeeded, I held her so fast.
"'Oh my poor little boys! my poor little boys!' she cried, in an agony of grief, as she bent over me and kissed my sleeping brother. 'What a wretch I am to leave you to the care of such a father. Gerard,' she said softly, 'if I never come back, will you sometimes think of me, and continue to love your poor mother?'
"I was growing sleepy, and was too young to comprehend the terrible truth concealed by those words. I dimly remember, as in a dream, a tall man leaning over us, and extricating my mother from my clinging arms.
"'He is going to sleep, Charlotte, dearest, you should have spared yourself this trying scene.'
"'How can I live without them, Charles?' she sobbed, and stretched her arms towards us.
"'You must now live for me, Charlotte. We have ventured too far to go back. Come away, my love, it is time we were on board.'
"That was the last time I ever saw my mother. Before she left the room I was asleep, in blissful ignorance of the great calamity that had befallen me.