The old woman turned her face to the wall, and said in a fretful tone, "Nonsense, Ursula. I'm tired; let me go to sleep!" The word of tenderness which she had sought as her only recompense was not uttered; the mother fell asleep without pressing her daughter's hand; and the poor girl, falling on her knees, poured out her sorrows in prayer to One who could both hear and heal them.
From that time Ursula became more pale, more silent, more cast down than ever. The last sharp sorrow bore away all traces of her youth and beauty. "All is ended!" she used to say; and all, save duty, was ended for her on earth. No tidings came of Maurice d'Erval. Ursula had pleased his imagination, like some graceful melancholy picture, but time effaced its coloring from his memory, and he forgot. How many things are forgotten in this life! How rarely do the absent mourn each other long!
One year after these events, Ursula's mother began visibly to decline, yet without suffering from any positive malady. Her daughter watched and prayed by her bed, and received her last benediction. "Once more she is with thee, Martha!" sighed Ursula: "be it thine to watch over her in heaven." She knelt down, and prayed by the side of the solitary old man. She dressed him in mourning without his being conscious of it; but on the second day he turned toward the empty arm-chair next his own, and cried, "My wife!"
Ursula spoke to him, and tried to divert his attention; but he repeated, "My wife!" while the tears rolled down his cheeks. In the evening, when his supper was brought, he turned away from it, and fixing his eyes on the vacant chair, said, "My wife!"
Ursula tried every expedient that love and sorrow could suggest; but in vain. The old man continued watching the place which his wife was wont to occupy; and refusing food, he would look at Ursula, and with clasped hands, in the querulous tone of a child imploring some forbidden indulgence, repeat, "My wife!" In a month afterward he died. His last movement was to raise his clasped hands, look up to Heaven, and cry "My wife!" as though he saw her waiting to receive him. When the last coffin was borne away from the old gray house, Ursula murmured softly, "My God! couldst thou not have spared them to me a little longer?" She was left alone; and many years have passed since then.
I left the dark old town and Ursula to travel into distant lands. By degrees she ceased to write to me, and after many vain efforts to induce her to continue the correspondence, I gradually lost all trace of her. I sometimes ask myself, "What has been her fate? Is she dead?" Alas! the poor girl was ever unfortunate: I fear she still lives!
STREET MUSIC IN LONDON.
"Charming place this," said a mad lady to us while looking out of a window of the finest Lunatic Asylum in North Britain; "so retired, so quiet, so genteel, so remote from the busy hum of men and women. The view you perceive is lovely—quite sylvan (there were two trees in the remote distance), 'Silence reigns around,' as the poet says, and then you see, sir, we do not allow street bands to come here."