The little Alice, Maria Hatherton's own child, had lingered and

struggled long, but all the care and kindness of the good Sisters at

St. Norbert's had been unavailing, she had sunk at last, and the mother

remained in a dull, silent, tearless misery, quietly doing all that was

required of her, but never speaking nor giving the ladies any opening to

try to make an impression upon her.

Rachel gleaned more intelligence than her mother meant her to obtain,

and brooded over it in her weakness and her silence.

Recovery is often more trying than illness, and Rachel suffered greatly.

Indeed, she was not sure that she ought to have recovered at all, and

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perhaps the shock to her nerves and spirits was more serious than

the effect of the sharp passing disorder, which had, however, so much

weakened her that she succumbed entirely to the blow. "Accountable for

all," the words still rang in her ears, and the all for which she was

accountable continually magnified itself. She had tied a dreadful knot,

which Fanny, meek contemned Fanny had cut, but at the cost of grievous

suffering and danger to her boys, and too late to prevent that death

which continually haunted Rachel; those looks of convulsive agony came

before her in all her waking and sleeping intervals. Nothing put them

aside, occupation in her weakness only bewildered and distracted her,

and even though she was advancing daily towards convalescence, leaving

her room, and being again restored to her sister, she still continued

listless, dejected, cast down, and unable to turn her mind from this one

dreary contemplation. Of Fanny and her sons it was hardly possible

to think, and one of the strange perturbations of the mind in illness

caused her to dwell far less on them than on the minor misery of the

fate of the title-deeds of the Burnaby Bargain, which she had put into

Mauleverer's hand. She fancied their falling into the hands of some

speculator, who, if he did not break the mother's heart by putting up

a gasometer, would certainly wring it by building hideous cottages, or

desirable marine residences. The value would be enhanced so as to be

equal to more than half that of the Homestead, the poor would have been

cheated of it, and what compensation could be made? Give up all her own

share? Nay, she had nothing absolutely her own while her mother lived,

only £5,000 was settled on her if she married, and she tortured herself

with devising plans that she knew to be impracticable, of stripping

herself, and going forth to suffer the poverty she merited. Yes, but how

would she have lived? Not like the Williamses! She had tried teaching

like the one, and writing like the other, but had failed in both. The

Clever Woman had no marketable or available talent. She knew very well

that nothing would induce her mother and sister to let her despoil

herself, but to have injured them would be even more intolerable; and

more than all was the sickening uncertainty, whether any harm had been

done, or what would be its extent.




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