Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/47

Rh that she impatiently hurried home, to find the street-door standing wide open, while a young neighbour exclaimed on seeing her, "Oh! Miss, your Mamma is very ill; she has sent for my mother, who is up in the bed-room with her." To utter an inarticulate cry, fly up the stairs, hurry into the room, and find her mother lying back in her easy chair, with arms helplessly hanging over it, wildly-rolling eyes, mouth wide open, was the affair of an instant. At the sight of Manon some animation returned to her face; she made ineffectual efforts to speak, tried to lift her arms, and with a supreme effort of will raised her hand, and, gently stroking the girl's cheeks, as if to calm her, wiped the streaming tears from her face. With that last upflickering of love, her limbs grew rigid; she would fain have smiled, have spoken some parting words of consolation, but it was in vain.

Her daughter seemed to multiply herself to assist in saving her dying mother. She sent for the doctor, for her father, she flew to the apothecary and back, she administered an emetic, she helped her mother to bed, but nothing availed. Her eyes closed, her head fell forward on her breast, her breathing became increasingly painful, and at ten o'clock in the evening, as in a dream, Manon heard the doctor and her father sending for a priest to administer extreme unction. Standing at the foot of the bed, mechanically holding a candle in her hand while the priest was praying, with eyes fixed on her mother, she never stirred, till suddenly the light dropped from her grasp, and she fell senseless on the floor. When she came back to consciousness her mother was no more. The sighs and tears of those around, her father's livid face, the whispers and muffled inquiries, the efforts of the bystanders to