Page:Bianca, or, The Young Spanish Maiden (Toru Dutt).djvu/36

 THE

BIANCA.

OR

THE YOUNG SPANISH MADIEN.

Days and weeks the girl lay tossing in her bed of illness. She took very little nourishment; a doctor from London was sent for; there were moments when all hope for her life was given up. Garcia wrote to her maternal aunt Dorothy, now Mrs. Cranly, a widow. She was very fond of Bianca, and not only loved but esteemed her highly; she came at once to nurse her. Bianca would, in her delirium, call back things that happened long ago, when she was a girl. Once, she started up with fierce angry eyes;—"Laissez-la aller, je vous le répète, ou je vous tue!" And she put up her hands as though in the act of levelling a pistol at somebody; she dropped her hands presently, with a smile of cool sarcasm, "c'est un poltron, après tout." Then she would go back to her still earlier days; "Inez je te demande pardon; j’avais tort do m'emportor comme ça, je crois ce que tu dis!“ She would say, penitently. "N'en parlons plus ma sœur." Then she would say;—Pauvre sœur! elle est morte si jeune, si jeune; pourquoi est-ello morte, elle, si bonne, si belle, —couronnéo do l'astre do la nuit."—Then sighing,

“C’estmoi qui aurait dû mourir."

The father keeping watch night and day, would sometimes get angry with Lord More, and reproach him as being the root