more: no hope, no good: only passion, and guilt, and horror; but alive! Alive! My sensations choked me — No tears fell yet I sobbed, and breathed short and hard; one only thought possessed me, and I could only utter one word, that half screaming was perpetually on my lips; Alive! Alive! —

I had taken the steward with me for he, much better than I, could make the requisite enquiries — the poor old man could not restrain his tears as he saw my deep distress and knew the cause — he sometimes uttered a few broken words of consolation: in moments like these the mistress and servant become in a manner equals and when I saw his old dim eyes wet with sympathizing tears; his gray hair thinly scattered on an age-wrinkled brow I thought oh if my father were as he is — decrepit & hoary — then I should be spared this pain —