438 WYLEER'S HAJVD.
there, she uttered a deep groan, and looked with such a
gaze in the face of the maid who had admitted her, that
she thought the old woman was dying.
Sick rooms, even when, palpably, doctors, nurses, friends,
have all ceased to hope, are not to those who stand in the
very nearest and most tender relations to the patient, al-
together chambers of despair. There are those who hov-
er about the bed, and note every gleam and glow of sub-
siding life, and will read in sunset something of the col-
ors of the dawn, and cling wildly to these hallucinations
of love; and no one has the heart to tear them from them.
Just now, Dolly fancied that "little man was better —
the darling! the treasure! oh, precious little man! He
was coming back!"
So, she ran down with this light of hope in her face,
and saw old Tamar in the hall, and gave her a glass of the
wine which Rachel had provided, and the old woman's
spirit came again.
"She was glad — yes, very glad. She was thankful to
hear the dear child was better." But there was a weight
upon her soul, and a dreadful horror on her countenance
still.
"Will you please, ma'am, write a little note — my old
hand shakes so, she could hardly read my writing — to
my mistress —Miss Radie, ma'am. I see pen and ink on
the table there. I was not able to go up to the Hall,
ma'am, with the message. There's something on the road
I could not pass."
"Something! What was it?" said Dolly, staring with
round eyes in the old woman's woeful face, her curiosity
aroused for a moment.
"Something, ma'am — a person— I can't exactly tell
— above the steps, in the Blackberry path. It would cost
my young mistress her life. For Heaven's sake, ma'am,