Miss Secker has just been here. She says the report came from the Stone House. Mr. Pevensey had written some hurried orders to the steward, saying Mrs. Pevensey, in crossing the _Mer de Glace_, had fallen through a _crevasse_, and, with difficulty, had been drawn up with ropes, alive, but nearly dashed to pieces. Oh, melancholy news! the mother of so large a family! so kind a neighbour! so admirable a wife! so charitable and exemplary in the various relations of life! What a loss she will be, should she not recover! Meanwhile, what responsibility devolves upon poor Arbell, her sole nurse! It is enough to put a grey head on her young shoulders. * * * * * This morning, I could not rest till I was off in the donkey-chair to call on Mrs. Prout, and inquire whether she had heard anything from Emily. The post had just come in; I found them in tears over Arbell’s letter, inclosed to them by Emily. It was written at her mother’s bedside, in the little parsonage of a Swiss _pasteur_. Poor mamma, she wrote, was taken out more dead than alive. The guides, who were all goodness, made a kind of litter for her with their poles and ropes, and threw their jackets over it. But when papa lifted her on it, she thrilled all over, like a little bird that had fallen out of its nest; and Arbell turned her head away, for it made her feel quite sick. So then, as the litter shook her so much, they only took her at first to the nearest _châlet_, where there was a very kind _bergere_, and where they laid her on the heaps of hay for the cows; and a guide ran off to the inn for an English doctor, whose name they happened to have seen on the travellers’ book.