I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She
said I oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded
water. As I laid her down--for I raised her and supported her on my
arm while she drank--I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with
mine: the feeble fingers shrank from my touch--the glazing eyes
shunned my gaze.
"Love me, then, or hate me, as you will," I said at last, "you have
my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God's, and be at peace."
Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the
effort to change her habitual frame of mind: living, she had ever
hated me--dying, she must hate me still.
The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered half-an-
hour longer, hoping to see some sign of amity: but she gave none.
She was fast relapsing into stupor; nor did her mind again rally:
at twelve o'clock that night she died. I was not present to close
her eyes, nor were either of her daughters. They came to tell us
the next morning that all was over. She was by that time laid out.
Eliza and I went to look at her: Georgiana, who had burst out into
loud weeping, said she dared not go. There was stretched Sarah
Reed's once robust and active frame, rigid and still: her eye of
flint was covered with its cold lid; her brow and strong traits wore
yet the impress of her inexorable soul. A strange and solemn object
was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with gloom and pain: nothing
soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or hopeful, or subduing did it
inspire; only a grating anguish for HER woes--not MY loss--and a
sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a form.
Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some minutes
she observed "With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age: her
life was shortened by trouble." And then a spasm constricted her
mouth for an instant: as it passed away she turned and left the
room, and so did I. Neither of us had dropt a tear.