"Mother! mother!" was all that she could say for sobbing, as she took her mother's hand in hers and covered it with tears and kisses. Mrs. Netterville appeared for a moment too much overcome to speak, or even move, but gradually a faint flush passed over her wan face, and her eyes at last grew brighter and more life-like, when Nellie, making a strong and desperate effort to command her feelings, suddenly wiped away her tears and bent over the bed to kiss her.
"O mother! mother!" the poor girl could not refrain from once more sobbing, "is it thus that I see you after all?"
"Nay, child," the mother gasped with difficulty, "you should rather thank God for it on your knees. See you not it is an especial mercy? If I had not burst a blood-vessel to-day, to-morrow—yes, to-morrow"—a shudder ran through her wasted frame, and she broke off suddenly.
"But I have brought you a reprieve," sobbed Nellie, hardly knowing what she said, or the danger of saying it at that moment—"a reprieve which is almost a pardon. Only a few days more, and you would have been free, whereas now—now"—tears choked her utterance, and, hiding her face on her mother's scanty coverlet, she sobbed as if her heart were breaking. Mrs. Netterville half raised herself on her pallet bed. For one brief moment she struggled with that desire for life which lurks in every human breast, and which Nellie's exclamation had called forth afresh in hers. For one brief moment that phantom of life and liberty, lost just as they had been found again—lost just as they had become more than ever precious in her eyes—that contrast between what was to be her portion and what it might have been, deluged her soul with a bitterness more intolerable than that of death itself, and her frail body shook and trembled like an aspen leaf beneath the new weight of misery thus laid upon it. That one unguarded word of Nellie's had, in fact, changed, as if by magic, all her thoughts and feelings and aspirations. Death and life, and health and sickness, freedom and captivity, had each put on a new and unexpected aspect in her eyes, and that very thing which, only a minute or two before, had seemed to her soul as a source of real consolation, had suddenly taken the guise of a great misfortune. It was as if God himself had mocked her with feigned mercy; a weaker soul might so have said, and sunk beneath the burden! But with that strong and well-tried spirit the struggle ended otherwise.
Clasping her wasted hands together, and lifting up her eyes to heaven, the dying woman exclaimed, in a voice which none could hear and doubt of the truth of the sentiments it uttered, "My God! my God! Thy will, not mine, be done!" Then she fell back quietly on her pillow, exhausted indeed with the effort she had made, but calm and smiling and resigned, as if that sudden glimpse of renewed happiness and life had never, mirage-like, risen to mock her with its beauty.
The first use Mrs. Netterville made of her victory over nature was to comfort Nellie.
"Weep not, dear child," she whispered tenderly; "weep not so sadly, but rather thank God with me for the consolation which he has given us in this meeting. Where is Hamish?" she added, turning her dim eyes toward the open door, where Ormiston and O'More were lingering still, and evidently fancying that one or other of them was her absent servant—"where is Hamish? He has done my bidding bravely; why comes he not forward, that I may thank him?"
"Hamish is not here, mother; I left him with my grandfather."
"God help you, child!" moaned Mrs. Netterville, a sudden spasm at her heart at the thought of her unprotected child, "God help you! have you come hither all this way alone?"