A shudder passed through the frame of that young mother, as if the last gleam of life had been torn from her heart. Her eyelids quivered, and her lips were, for an instant, faintly convulsed. The nurse turned suddenly to the other couch, and back again, while this life-struggle was going on. Without unclosing her eyes, the poor creature reached forth her arms, clasped them fondly again with a sigh of ineffable delight, and sunk away motionless, without a perceptible breath. But it was not for joy. As the child, a moment before, had seemed to keep the vitality in her heart with its own warmth, so now some outward chill drove back the blood to its centre. With a moan, and a struggle, she came to life, opened her great blue eyes, and fixed them wildly on the nurse. “I am cold, oh! so cold,” she said, shivering, and cowering down into the bed; “what have you done to me?” “Done to you?” said the nurse, faintly, “done to you? Nothing, but try my best to bring you to. Why, it’s almost dead you’ve been, I don’t know how long.” The invalid did not hear this. A momentary impulse of strength seized upon her. She flung back the bed-clothes, and bending her face downward, fixed those wild eyes upon the child. One glance, and she lifted them with a sharp, questioning look to the woman, and passing her hand over the little face, whispered hoarsely,— “What is this?” The nurse put her hands down and touched the infant. The poor mother felt those coarse hands shaking against her own, and shrunk away with a faint cry: it seemed as if they had inflicted a wound upon her. It was some moments before the woman spoke. When she did, it was with a sort of unnatural quickness, accompanied with hurried glances down the room. “Where’s the doctor? It might have been expected. Fainting fits all night—overlaid and smothered it. Half on your face when I came in—arms grasped around it like a vice. No wonder it’s cold.” “Cold. Is that all—only cold?” cried the mother, trembling all over,—“only cold?” “Cold as a stone, and dead as a door-nail, that’s what it is?” answered the nurse, sharply, for that moment the physician of the ward came in sight, and the nurse judged well of the effect her brutal speech would have on the young creature. With a cry, that in her feebleness scarcely arose above a wail, she fell back perfectly senseless again. “What is the trouble here?” inquired the doctor, coming forward. “Oh, I expected this!” he added, glancing at the dead; “scarcely a breath of life in her from the first. The baby too, I suppose.” “No!” answered the nurse, quickly; “_that_ poor creature has lost her baby. Hers is just alive yet; I wish they wouldn’t send such delicate creatures here. It’s enough to destroy one’s character to have them die off so.”