My baby died a few weeks later--partly,
I think, from the effect of my own condition on her frail organization,
and the hope of years was blighted in this fragile blossom--the first
that had blessed our union.
The little Constance slumbered by Mabel's side, and a slip from that
bunch of white roses, the last my sister had gathered, shadows the
marbles that guard both of those now-distant, yet not neglected graves.
Thus death at last entered our happy household!
A great shadow fell over me, which I vainly strove to dispel with all
the effort of my reason and my will. Physicians, remembering my mother's
inscrutable melancholy--a part of that mysterious malady that consumed
her life--whispered their warnings in my husband's ears, and he
resolved, with that energy which belongs to men of his nature, to lay
the axe at once to the root of this evil in the only way that presented
itself to his mind--as possible of accomplishment.
At first I resisted faintly the coincidence of his will, which he knew
was sure to come sooner or later; and to the very last it was agony
unspeakable to me, to think that my father's house should pass into the
hands of strangers, and that the place that knew me should know me no
more!
Very resolutely and calmly did Wardour endure and stem my opposition.
Swift and strong as the current of my will flowed naturally, he was ever
its master, as the stone dam can stay and lull the fiercest rivers.
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