"My dear lady, she is in God’s hands; He may raise her yet. Everything that can be done shall be done; but I cannot conceal from you that I entertain serious apprehensions." He spoke in tones too low to be heard in the chamber of the invalid. "But I may go to her--nurse her--" "Pardon me," replied the medical man, courteously but firmly interposing, "our patient is in a very critical state; the pleasure of seeing you after so long an absence would cause a degree of excitement which might be attended with fatal consequences." Flora said nothing, but pressed her hand against her heart; she felt as though it would break. "Ann is most watchful and attentive," pursued the doctor, feeling for Flora’s evident distress, "and Miss Lyddie will not quit the room for a moment." "Lyddie!" thought the miserable daughter, with a sharper pang of envy than her gentle bosom had ever before known; "and she may sit and watch where I dare not enter; she may look on that loved face which I have come so far to see; she is the comfort, and I--and I--!" Flora leaned down her head upon her clasped hands and tried to stifle her sobs. A miserable night was that for Lady Legrange--the most miserable which she had ever known. The cold became more and more piercing, yet no entreaties could induce her either to go to rest or to seek the comfort of a fire in one of the rooms below. She had a chair brought for her to the door of her mother’s room, and there she sat, trembling and shivering, counting every stroke of the clock which at intervals--oh! how long and weary--told the lapse of time. She heard the wind shaking the casements, as though fiercely demanding entrance, and shrieking aloft in the chimneys with a wild and wailing noise; and sometimes her painfully strained ear could catch sounds from the sick-room--a light step, a soft rustle, a low voice, or, terrible to hear, the faint moans which told of irrepressible suffering. Flora also, as morning drew nigh, heard words, words from the lips of her parent, words which reason guided no longer--but not one word which it could have pained piety to hear. The unconscious sufferer uttered prayers for mercy, for pardon--prayers for those who were dear to her heart. Flora wept as she heard her own name repeated again and again in unconscious supplications. It seemed as though that which had been the habit of a life remained now as an instinct; the mind might be darkened, reason might have fled, but love and piety lingered yet in their accustomed home, the last to leave the sanctuary which had enshrined them so long. To apply to a nobler subject the beautiful simile of Moore-- "Like a vase in which roses have once been distilled, You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will, But the scent of the roses will hang round it still."