Home at Last

His goodness verging on weakness (as all the softer virtues did
in her mind), and her own contempt for Mr. and Mrs. Hale, and
positive dislike to Margaret, were the ideas which occupied Mrs.
Thornton, till she was struck into nothingness before the dark
shadow of the wings of the angel of death. There lay Mrs. Hale--a
mother like herself--a much younger woman than she was,--on the
bed from which there was no sign of hope that she might ever rise
again No more variety of light and shade for her in that darkened
room; no power of action, scarcely change of movement; faint
alternations of whispered sound and studious silence; and yet
that monotonous life seemed almost too much! When Mrs. Thornton,
strong and prosperous with life, came in, Mrs. Hale lay still,
although from the look on her face she was evidently conscious of
who it was.

But she did not even open her eyes for a minute or
two. The heavy moisture of tears stood on the eye-lashes before
she looked up, then with her hand groping feebly over the
bed-clothes, for the touch of Mrs. Thornton's large firm fingers,
she said, scarcely above her breath--Mrs. Thornton had to stoop
from her erectness to listen,-

'Margaret--you have a daughter--my sister is in Italy. My child
will be without a mother;--in a strange place,--if I die--will
you'---And her filmy wandering eyes fixed themselves with an intensity
of wistfulness on Mrs. Thornton's face For a minute, there was no
change in its rigidness; it was stern and unmoved;--nay, but that
the eyes of the sick woman were growing dim with the
slow-gathering tears, she might have seen a dark cloud cross the
cold features. And it was no thought of her son, or of her living
daughter Fanny, that stirred her heart at last; but a sudden
remembrance, suggested by something in the arrangement of the
room,--of a little daughter--dead in infancy--long years
ago--that, like a sudden sunbeam, melted the icy crust, behind
which there was a real tender woman.