me. Oh why—why did I not follow you the fatal night you went to the chapel?"
"Dear Mam'selle (said Agatha, rising and approaching her), try to compose yourself; no grief, no lamentations can recall my blessed lady."
"Oh! Agatha (cried Madeline), 'tis not a common friend; 'tis a mother I lament;—she was the only person from whom I ever experienced the tenderness of one. Do you not wonder (she continued, grasping the arm of Agatha) how any one could be so wicked as to injure such a woman—a woman who never, I am confident, in the whole course of her life, injured a mortal; whose hand was as liberal as her heart, and whose pity relieved, even when her reason condemned the sufferer? Would you not have thought, Agatha (again bending o'er the bed, from which she had a little retreated) that the innocence of that countenance might have disarmed the rage of a savage? What a smile is there still upon it; it seems to declare the happi-
