But before the doctor could arrive, I knew there was no need of his coming. There had been a little flutter of the drooping eyelid, ever so slight a quiver of the parted lip, and bending down, I had listened, with agonized suspense, for the low breathing, and called her name with the tenderness that never finds perfect expression till death warns us it shall be the last. Then a little arm crept round my neck, the soft eye opened for a moment, a sigh stirred the bosom that my forehead touched, and, as the arm relaxed its faint clasp, I knew that Essie was a stranger and an alien no longer, but was where it were better for us all to be--where there is peace, eternal, unbroken, beyond the reach of sin forever. For those first moments, when I knelt alone beside the little bed, with the soft arm still round my neck, and the breath of that sigh still on the air, there was no feeling that I had suffered a bereavement, that death and sorrow had entered the house; but holy thoughts of God and heaven--strange longings for the rest that she had entered into--a sort of hushed and hallowed awe, as if the new angel still lingered, with a half regret at leaving me alone--as if the parting, if parting there were to be, were but for a "little while"--as if the communion of saints were so divine and comfortable a thing, that there was no need for tears and sorrow. But when there came a sudden tumult below, hurried steps upon the stairs, a sound beside me, a pause, and then a cry that made my blood freeze in my veins, I knew that there was more than joy in heaven--that there was bitter agony on earth: that there was more than an angel won above--that there was a child dead below--a household in mourning--a mother's heart writhing in torture--a judgment fallen--a punishment following close upon a sin--a remorse begun that no time could heal, that no other life could quench, no other love allay. CHAPTER XXIII. "Back, then, complainer; loathe thy life no more, Nor deem thyself upon a desert shore, Because the rocks thy nearer prospect close." KEBLE. Félicie had fled. When, in the agonized confusion of that dreadful night, she was at last remembered and searched for, there was no trace of her to be found, and all future inquiry was equally unavailing. The wretched woman need not have concealed herself with such desperate fear; no one felt any heart to search her out, or revenge on her the death of her little charge. No one of that sad household but knew, in their hearts, that there was a sin at more than her door--a sin that lay heavy in proportion to its unnaturalness and strangeness.