Her life was prolonged,
certainly; but this simply means, that she was three years in dying,
instead of three months. She was a gloriously lovely creature, like a
fair young saint for beauty and purity--quite an ideal thing, with her
golden hair and large blue eyes! She was my only girl--my youngest, my
darling, my best treasure! My first real sorrow--now fifteen years
ago--was when I saw her laid, on her twenty-first birthday, in the
English burial-ground at Madeira. It is on the gravestone, that she
died of consumption: would that it had been added--and her mother of
grief! From the day of her death, my happiness left me!'
Here the poor lady paused, and buried her face in her hands. The first
sorrow was evidently also the keenest; and I felt my own eyelids moist
as I watched this outpouring of the mother's anguish. After all, here
was grief beyond the power of wealth to assuage: here was sorrow
deeper than any mere worldly disappointment.
'I had two sons,' she went on to say after a short time--'only two.
They were fine young men, gifted and handsome. In fact, all my
children were allowed to be very models of beauty. One entered the
army, the other the navy. The eldest went with his regiment to the
Cape, where he married a woman of low family--an infamous creature of
no blood; though she was decently conducted for a low-born thing as
she was. She was well-spoken of by those who knew her; but what
_could_ she be with a butcher for a grandfather! However, my poor
infatuated son loved her to the last.
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