Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/45

 20 THE MOURNING MOTHER.

sometimes spoken of the anxiety with which her aged mother waited to welcome those descendants, born in a foreign clime, whom of course she had never seen ; and so exquisite was their beauty, that it would not have been surprising, had a thrill of pride heightened the pleasure with which she painted the joy of such a meeting. The youngest was a babe of less than a year, and we, who often shared its playful wile, fan cied that it had grown languid as if from some inhe rent disease. Yet its large black eyes still beamed with strange lustre, so that neither the parents nor nurse would allow that aught affected it, save what arose from the change of habits, incidental to the confine ment of the ship. Yet, that night, the mother more uneasy than she was willing to allow, decided not to leave its cradle. In the saloon adjoining our state room she took her place, and when we retired, the fair infant lay in troubled sleep. Yet even then the spoiler was nearer to it than that watchful mother, and ere the morning, he smote it in her arms. We found her clasping it closely to her bosom, as if fain to revivify it with her breath. Masses of glossy black hair, escaping from their confinement, fell over her shoulders, and drooped as a curtain over the marble features of the dead. Mingled with gasps of grief, that shook her like a reed, were exclamations of hope, that hope, which clings and cleaves to the wounded heart, binding its fibres, wherever the blood-drop oozes, and striving like a pitying angel, to staunch where it may not heal. &quot; Constance, Constance ! look at me ! Oh, my dear

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