She had followed her conductor
almost without consciousness, and with such deep absorption
of spirit, that she neither once conjectured whither they
were going, nor what was to be the final issue of their
flight. But now, when she stood on the lake shore,
suddenly awakened, as if by some startling spell, to
every harrowing recollection, and with her attention
assisted by objects long endeared, and rendered familiar
to her gaze--when she beheld the vessel that had last
borne her across the still bosom of the Huron, fleeing
for ever from the fortress where her arrival had been so
joyously hailed--when she saw that fortress itself
presenting the hideous spectacle of a blackened mass of
ruins fast crumbling into nothingness--when, in short,
she saw nothing but what reminded her of the terrific
past, the madness of reason returned, and the desolation
of her heart was complete. And then, again, when she
thought of her generous, her brave, her beloved, and too
unfortunate father, whom she had seen perish at her
feet--when she thought of her own gentle Clara, and the
sufferings and brutalities to which, if she yet lived,
she must inevitably be exposed, and of the dreadful fate
of the garrison altogether, the most menial of whom was
familiar to her memory, brought up, as she had been,
among them from her childhood--when she dwelt on all
these things, a faintness, as of death, came over her,
and she sank without life on the beach.
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