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250 his whole body, endeavouring to recall life in its last low ebbings, by breathing into him his own breath, seeking by such means to reanimate the vital spark, to Mrs. De Brooke seeming entirely extinct! In all the agony of grief she threw herself by the side of her expiring husband, uttering aloud the most lamentable complaints. His cold hand falling inert from her touch, was again raised to her quivering lips or palpitating bosom. Her attached husband! her friend! her solace! her all that, in sharing, could help to allay the bitter cup of adversity, she supposed lost to her for ever!

Her apprehensions, nevertheless, were groundless. It was but the image of death thus presented to her affrighted vision, not its reality!

"Leabe massa to me, leabe massa to me," at length ejaculated Robert; "massa not dead, massa not dead."

The morbid pallidness of De Brooke's features by degrees assumed a more living hue; each feeble extremity, beneath the kindly warmth imparted by those of Robert's, gradually gave resistance to the pressure; the power of motion returning, he raised his heavy eyes, which for a time were fixed in vacancy: as when some dreadful dream still agitates the fancy, so De Brooke, in his confused gaze, seemed doubtful of his real state. A few