Читать книгу The Daughter-In-Law, Her Father & Family - Барбара Хофланд - Страница 4

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Each lonely scene shall thee restore, For thee the tear be duly shed.—Collins.

"I am afraid, my love, you find yourself worse than usual this evening," said Mr. Franklin to his wife, as he approached the sofa where she was sitting.

"On the contrary, my love, I am rather better than usual, and find myself able to sit and chat with you a little," replied Mrs. Franklin, while a faint smile played on her pallid features.

"What can be the matter with Louisa, I wonder? her eyes were very red when she bade me good night on the stairs, and I concluded the poor child was distressed on your account; though very happy to find myself mistaken, yet I wish I had inquired a little further into the cause of her uneasiness."

"Sit down my love, and I will satisfy you. Louisa has been crying, in consequence of our conversation, which has been of a nature to affect us both; but she is no longer distressed, and will eventually be no worse for the pain a sense of duty urged me at this time to afflict her with; she will never forget what I have said, and we shall both be spared the necessity of renewing the subject."

"You surprise me, my love; the child is in general so tractable and good, that I had no idea she could do any thing to offend a mamma she loves so fondly, at such a time as this especially."

"Nor has she, my dear, offended me in any way; I have only awakened her feelings, by pointing out a few errors she may escape, and a few duties she ought to practise, in a situation she will probably find herself placed in by-and-by, where her conduct must, in a great measure, determine not only her own happiness, but that of her dear father also."

"You are very considerate, my love," said Mr. Franklin, as, with a shrinking eye he gazed on the altered form of his beloved wife, "you are very considerate to guard our poor little girl from the errors you speak of so very long beforehand; but it will be something wonderful indeed, though she is an extraordinary child, if at nineteen she should remember the lectures you gave her ten years before, and regulate her conduct in the choice of a husband, by precepts given at a period when the choice of a doll is her principal concern."

"Very true, my love," returned Mrs. Franklin, with a look of great tenderness and anxiety; "but the advice I gave Louisa did not respect her own marriage (for that would indeed have been somewhat premature); it is probable that of her father may take place a great deal sooner."

"My God! Louisa, what do you mean? my love, my own dear love, why will you tear my heart by such a cruel supposition?—if—if I were so very wretched as to lose you, which God in mercy forbid! do you think I could ever think of any other woman supplying your place? Oh, Louisa! surely you cannot think me capable of it! I have not deserved such an opinion as this, from a wife so fondly, so constantly beloved."

Mr. Franklin threw himself on the sofa, and, overcome by his feelings, wept aloud.

Mrs. Franklin hoped that she should have had strength to bear this trial, but she found her nerves exceedingly shook, and her own tears would spring to her eyes; but she endeavoured to lift up her heart to Him from whom cometh all consolation; and as soon as she perceived the violent emotion under which her husband suffered gave way, she thus addressed him:—"I am convinced, my dear Charles, that the time will come, when you will see, that without doubting your love, your constancy, or the propriety of your conduct in any respect, I might yet conclude it a very possible thing, that you would, at some future period, make choice of another wife, in case my present disorder terminates in the way we have both reason to expect."

Mr. Franklin was unable to speak, and after a short pause, she proceeded:—"I do not wish, further than is necessary, to advert to an hour so awful and so painful to us both; I trust that our Heavenly Father, having called us to this trial, will give us strength to bear it; and shall only add, that my opinion on second marriages being somewhat different from those of the world in general, and founded on experience and observation, rather than abstract reasoning and feeling, I cannot help concluding, that you will one day marry again, though I am well assured at this moment your heart abhors the very idea. I have observed through life, that those men who have been most happy in their first connection, are the most desirous of forming a second, or at least the most liable to be led into it; and therefore, that the wife who is the most sincerely lamented, is much the most likely to meet with an early successor. You have been happy with me, Charles; you will find a loss of my society, when you have ceased to bewail my person, and that loss must be supplied to you in one way or other; it is more likely and more natural that a worthy and amiable woman should supply it, than any other kind of acquaintance."

"No, no, you are quite mistaken; I shall never, never forget you!" said the husband, vehemently.

"Forget me you never will, my dear, nor ever cease to love my memory, nor even to regret my loss; but grief is a passion, and it is the nature of all passions to subside in time, and frequently to be exhausted by their own violence; and you must allow me to say, I know so much of your temper, your habits, your wants, that I am certain, when your mind ceases to feed on its sorrows, it will be naturally led to look for some one on whom to bestow those tender attentions, and participate that affectionate companion, whereby you have for the last ten years made me the happiest of women."

"Have I not my child?"

"A child affords much to the heart, but little to the mind, especially to a man, and more especially when that child is a female; the prattle of Louisa will often divert a languid hour, I hope; but when you are harassed by the cares of business, vexed by men of one description, puzzled by those of another, or allured by a third, a little girl can neither assist your reasonings, soothe your troubles nor guard your virtues; and some female acquaintance may then rise to your mind, not in the odious light of a rival to her you have lost, but of a pitying friend who can console you for the misfortune; thus friendship may ripen into that tender regard which produces a connection less vivid, less dear, than a former one has been, yet salutary in its effects, as providing a companion for declining life, and "a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." Look round the circle of our acquaintance, my love, and you will find men of warm and tender hearts, whom we know to have made excellent husbands, and to have sincerely lamented their wives, and you will find them all married again, though, perhaps, at very different periods, according to their different characters; the most impetuous having been married soonest, but the most melancholy and sentimental coming in time to the same conclusion; whereas, the men who, either from their own levity, the faults of their deceased partners, or any other cause, were precisely the characters of whom superficial observers said—"Oh, he will soon be married again!—he has forgot his wife already!" and you will find them yet widowers, and likely to remain so. The warm and generous heart of a man of sensibility, who is called to this trial, though blasted, is not destroyed; and so surely as the hand of time, and the more blessed power of religion, heals its wounds and renovates its powers, so will the feelings it has been accustomed to cherish and to exercise, revive. In supposing you, my dear Charles, subject to the feelings common to human nature, do not think I impeach your love, or doubt your faith, but consider me as desiring your happiness, and capable of loving her who shall hereafter contribute to it; and in regulating the heart, and directing the conduct of my dear child, in a situation of the most trying importance, consider me as extending my cares and my love beyond the limits of my existence, and thus, in a great measure, continuing the companion of your future years, and the guardian of our mutual pledge of eternal affection."

Exhausted by her great exertion, Mrs. Franklin was ready to faint, and her husband, in great alarm, intreated her to speak no more; and assured her—"that although it was impossible for him to be convinced of the possibility of his heart ever being given to another, yet that her solicitude for his welfare, and the liberality of her opinions on a subject most women treated with abhorrence, must add, if it were possible, to that unbounded love and perfect esteem he now felt for her."

Mrs. Franklin, conscious that she had injured herself by this evening's conversation, yielded to his entreaties, and promised that she would not attempt to renew a subject to which she had been led to expatiate far beyond her first intentions, and which she found too much for her enfeebled frame to support.

This amiable woman had been married in her twenty-second year to Mr. Franklin, who was four years older: he was a merchant chiefly engaged in the Spanish trade, and connected in the way of business with her father, whose full consent was given to a marriage every way suitable in both parties. Mr. Franklin, in addition to his patrimonial fortune, which was considerable, (but being personal, was all engaged in commerce), was the heir to a fine old family estate, on the mother's side; but whose present incumbent was so little likely to leave it soon, that it appeared more likely to become the possession of his child than his own. Unfortunately it was entailed on the male heir, in default of which, it passed to a different family. Louisa, the eldest child of Mr. and Mrs. Franklin, whose humble memoirs we propose to relate in this volume, was born the first year of their marriage; and, though under the circumstance above-mentioned, there is reason to conclude, a son would have been more welcome, yet she was received with joy, and nourished with unbounded love by both parents.

Mrs. Franklin had no other child for three years, when she presented her husband with another girl, which caught the measles a few months after its birth, and died. This disappointment was not made up for the space of near four years, when the birth of a boy completed the happiness of Mr. Franklin; and for near two years this lovely blossom grew beneath his eye as the fairest flower in the world's wide garden; but, alas! about that time, the severe pain occasioned by cutting his teeth, brought on a fever, from which no power of medicine, no attention of parental solicitude could save him; and after much severe suffering, experienced during many weeks, he expired in the lap of his afflicted mother.

The sufferings of Mrs. Franklin on this occasion were not wholly mental; the dreadful nights she underwent with her little boy, especially the habit of jumping out of her warm bed and running into the nursery, which she had practised before he was so ill as to require her constant care, had given her a bad cold, which, being neglected (in the general and overpowering interest both herself and husband had felt for their precious boy) had fallen upon her lungs, and soon produced every symptom of pulmonary consumption. Ignorant of the nature of the complaint, those around imputed every little ailment she mentioned to grief alone; and when the prevalence of the disorder threw that hectic bloom into her pale cheek, which is the most fatal criterion of the complaint, poor Mr. Franklin began to hope she was recovering from the stroke of sorrow; and perhaps his fatal security might have continued still longer, if little Louisa had not said one day, as she stood earnestly looking at her mother,—"I wonder that mamma's arms should grow so very thin, when her cheeks are so rosy; now Betty's cheeks are as red as mamma's, but then her arms are fat and red too."

"People look thin in black, my love," said Mrs. Franklin, "from an effect of the light you are too young to understand."

"Yes; but, mamma, your arms are white, and they are thin too, and your neck and face is quite thin, for all that red colour comes after dinner so."

"The child is perfectly right," said Mr. Franklin; "you are ill, my love, I am sure you have a slow fever, or something of that kind; I must see Dr. Jackson directly."

The Doctor prescribed Bristol; and the alarmed and deeply-afflicted husband bore his wasted treasure to the reviving spring; a temporary amendment appeared to take place; and on their return to their residence in London, they received the congratulations of their friends, on the supposed restoration of Mrs. Franklin's health; but in a few weeks every consumptive symptom re-appeared; and they were ordered to return to Bristol, or set out for the Devonshire coast, with all speed.

Mrs. Franklin knew that the presence of her husband in London was not only necessary to his own affairs, but to those of his partners and their families. She felt the hand of death was upon her, not to be removed by mortal help, and she resolved to await the awful moment, in her own house, where she was surrounded by domestics who loved her, and friends who esteemed her, and where her husband's distress would admit some alleviation, from that diversion to melancholy inevitable to a man of business, in the scene of his engagements, and which could not take place at a distance from home. Her mind, deeply imbued with that blessed religion, whose precepts alone can support the mind about to be torn from every earthly blessing, when, rich in all, now sought in a peculiar manner for strength in the hour of need; and those hours in which the languor of disease abated, were spent in securing, by earnest prayer and meditation, an inheritance in that land, "where the moth doth not corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal;" and in communicating to her darling little one, as far as she was capable of understanding them, the great truths of Christianity, and with advising and impressing on her yielding mind, the necessity of carrying the precepts contained in the gospel into every part of her actual conduct in future life. She was particularly anxious to make her daughter understand the difference between humility and meanness; and to ground and settle the former in her mind as a rule of action, while she avoided the other, not only as contemptible, but sinful; nor was she less solicitous to show her the difference betwixt extravagance and generosity, so often confounded by young people; and to teach that the true groundwork of charity is a liberal economy. These precepts the wise mother inculcated by familiar examples, drawn from the objects and persons around them: for she well knew, that however desirous children may be to retain rules, given by those they love, and to treasure sentences uttered by dying lips, yet the natural volatility of youth, and the variety of pursuits they are engaged in, render it next to impossible that they should retain the spirit of a moral precept, unless it be embodied by example.

The reader must not suppose, that because Mrs. Franklin was now particularly anxious as to the state of her Louisa's mind, that she had been negligent in times past; on the contrary, she had ever been the most active and tender governess of her little girl, and had, till after the birth of her son, been herself the sole instructor of Louisa; after that time she had become a day-boarder in a neighbouring boarding-school, where she had made considerable proficiency in the usual avocations of her age and situation in life; but at the period we are now speaking of, all other education, save that of the heart, appeared comparatively insignificant in the eyes of the dying parent; and though she continued to send Louisa to school, as an amusement very necessary to divert the mind of a child of great sensibility, yet she seldom enquired after her progress in music or drawing, farther than to recommend industry in pursuing them; for her heart was full of higher subjects, and she felt every moment as a treasure, of which she was on the eve of being called to give a final account. She was truly thankful, that, although oppressed by a sense of weakness, which rendered far the greatest number of her hours useless, yet that she was not afflicted by severe pain or rendered unequal to bearing the company of her husband and child.

The most severe exercise her mind ever felt, arose from the idea that Louisa might one day be subject to the control of a step-mother, who might possibly be unfit, though perhaps not unworthy of the situation; she knew the mind of her child to be endowed with a more than ordinary understanding, and a sensibility unhappily so acute, that she would be but too apt easily to perceive the errors of those around her, and deeply to lament them. She trembled lest her talents should subject her to the dislike of a vulgar mind, who might contemn what it could not relish, and repress the scions it knew not how to cultivate, or warp the branch it could not rear.

Under these painful impressions, there were moments when she was almost tempted to ask Mr. Franklin for a promise she well knew he would make with avidity, that of never engaging in a second union; but the recollection of all she had observed in other men, who had been strongly attached to their wives, and who had yet (with scarcely a solitary exception) been in the course of a few years married again, the consciousness that he was a man peculiarly fitted to enjoy and adorn the connubial state, and that his person, manners, and station in life, were such as render it probable that many women would endeavour to gain his affection, deterred her from engaging him in a promise, which she was convinced he would keep, however painful, and which, the moment it became so, would defeat her wishes, which were as ardently desirous of his welfare, as they could be even of Louisa's.

Accustoming herself to look much on this subject, Mrs. Franklin at length beheld it without dismay; and by directing her judgment to the investigation of the good as well as evil, which might arise to her child from such a connection, she was enabled in a great measure to secure the one and ward off the other, so far as it was likely to affect the mind of Louisa; and though it was (with the utmost caution) yet almost impossible to revert to the termination of her life, without awakening grief, even to agony, in the throbbing heart of the poor child, yet she contrived so to bring forward examples and exhortations, that, long before the evening alluded to, a ground-work of obedience and friendly confidence had been laid in the breast of Louisa, when circumstances should call it into action, the happy effects of which were found long after the lips which uttered them were mouldered in the dust.

As Mrs. Franklin was truly solicitous to save her beloved partner from every unnecessary pang, she never again adverted to a circumstance, which, in the present tone of his spirits, appeared impossible to him, since every day, as it increased her weakness, seemed to increase his tenderness, and to bind her to his heart by tenfold cords. Her meekness and resignation, her unabating love and tender consideration, which induced her, under the extreme debility she now experienced, still to address him with cheerfulness, and conceal her fears and her pains, lest they should wound him, had the effect of rendering her an object of equal esteem and veneration; with affection he looked upon her almost as a being of superior order, which had been lent him for a time, from her native heaven, which she was about to revisit; and he never approached her but with sentiments in which devotional gratitude for past happiness was mingled with agonizing grief for its departure.

Those who have felt that bitter sorrow of attending the sick room of a consumptive friend, and have witnessed from day to day the fluctuations of this most flattering, though, in fact, most hopeless of all diseases, know that there are times when the patient appears to suffer so little, and appears so essentially relieved by some change of medicine or regimen, that those around them, who are not particularly conversant in their complaint, cannot help believing that a kind of miracle is wrought in their favour, and that they are about to receive them again from the very jaws of the grave. Hope, when nursed by affection, is rendered doubly sanguine, and the illusion she presents in this case is generally increased by the patient, whose meekness and tenderness throws a veil over suffering he forbears to communicate, lest it should wound the feelings of those most dear to him, while it enlarges on every agreeable sensation and temporary amendment. These various emotions were felt by poor Mr. Franklin, who veered between the incertitude of hope and fear, in a manner those only can conceive who have drank the same draught of sorrow with himself; he loved, most fondly, most tenderly loved his wife; she had been his early, his only choice, and his esteem for her character, which had increased with increasing knowledge of her worth, and was now, by her patient submission to the Divine will, and by her generous fortitude towards himself, rendered perfect in his eyes, tended every hour to make parting more painful, and force him to take refuge from the agony such thoughts inflicted, in any hope or expectation that relieved him, however improbable or fallacious such promise might appear to the eye of dispassionate reason.

Mrs. Franklin dreaded lest the fatal stroke should fall on him during these moments, and yet she found it impossible to repress the little pleasure thus snatched between long and melancholy intervals, although at times, as we have seen, she endeavoured to prepare him for the change, which, however it might be delayed, she felt to be inevitable.

As her end drew nigh, the painful struggles she had mentally endured for her husband and her child subsided; she was enabled, by a firm faith and a hope full of immortality, to cast all her cares upon her blessed Redeemer, and trust, not only her own eternal welfare, but the earthly comforts of those most dear to her, to Him who "ordereth all things aright;" and in the humble hope, that, according to her abilities, she had laid the foundation of good in one heart, and been in her day the minister of good to the other, she quietly resigned both to heaven, and awaited the call of her Heavenly Father, with pious confidence for the future and gratitude for the past.

The cares of business necessarily occupied a considerable portion of Mr. Franklin's time; and though the very sight of him might be truly said to do his wife good, yet she rather sought to increase his engagements, than request his company, aware of the pangs which followed every visit to her apartment. It was, however, happy for them both, that the evening was generally the period in which she was less incommoded by her cough and fever, than any other period of the day, and therefore the husband still found those hours so long and so sweetly dedicated to her society, still employed in her service, and devoted to an intercourse more interesting and endearing than any in which human nature is ever called to suffer or enjoy. This sacred hour was generally partaken by little Louisa, though it was her accustomed hour of retiring; but what mother, so situated, could deny herself the gratification of looking another and another time at the dear being on whom her eyes must close so soon for ever.

These were not melancholy evenings, though they were sometimes serious ones; each party repressed some feelings for the sake of the other, and both parents felt especially for the happiness of their child; and dreading lest an impression inimical to her peace, and inconsistent with her years, should be made on her mind during so long a period of solicitude, they endeavoured to divert their own views, for the sake of directing hers from too close or frequent reflections on the subject of her mother's illness, each inwardly trusting, that when the moment of separation did indeed arrive, strength would be given them from above, proportioned to their wants. So fully did Mrs. Franklin feel the truth of the poet's assertion, that

"When such friends part, 'tis the survivor dies,"

that she felt it her duty, as far as she was enabled in so weak a state, to amuse, console, and cheer her husband, as the one whose lot in this severe dispensation was infinitely the harder of the two; and notwithstanding the conviction she felt, that in time he might, like other men, be induced to make a second choice, yet her heart trembled for his more immediate sufferings, and her feeble lips breathed many a silent prayer for the mitigation of his impending sorrow.

One evening as she was thus employed, with little Louisa reading the Blind Child on a stool beside her, they were interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Franklin before his usual time.—"I have been so lucky, my love," said he, eagerly, "as to procure you a few oysters at last, and I hope you will allow me to open them for you; I fear they are not fine, but I am sure they are sweet."

"They will be very sweet from your hand, Charles: for though it is continually feeding me with good things, its power of adding to their flavour does not diminish."

As Mrs. Franklin spoke, she half rose from the sofa where she lay, and Louisa springing up, caught the pillows, and shaking them as she had seen the nurse do, placed them behind her mother's back, and then put the stool on which she had been sitting under her feet. Mr. Franklin gave an approving nod to her exertions, at the same time he said—"I have forgot my knife, Louisa; I have not my wits about me as much as you, child, as young as you are; I must confess women are the best nurses by far."

"Yet I have made a very good one of you, my dear," said the invalid with a cheerful accent; "you seldom make a noise with the door, or break the fire, or throw down a physic bottle now-a-days, and no one moves me half so easily as you do; there is no lesson affection cannot easily learn."

"Then learn to eat this oyster," returned the husband playfully, as he presented one to her parched lips.

Mrs. Franklin had been very fond of oysters, and with the sickly desire common to her complaint, had lamented they were not in season, under the idea that they would greatly relieve her; she ate several at this time, declaring they were very good, and the only food she had taken for a long time which tasted as it used to do. After making what she considered a very hearty supper, to the great satisfaction of her husband and Louisa, she laid down again on the sofa, observing, that she should rest better if she heard them engaged in conversation, than if they remained silent; for though desirous of obtaining composure, she had no inclination for sleep.

Mr. Franklin taking Louisa on his knee, observed that her mamma looked much cooler and better than usual.

"Yes," returned Louisa, "but that is no wonder, for she has never coughed once since five this morning; and though her fever was very bad after dinner, yet it was gone down charmingly before you brought the oysters."

"Indeed!" said the anxious husband, and his eyes again turned to heaven, illumined by thankfulness and hope.

"Move me a little, my love," said Mrs. Franklin; "I think the other side will be easier."

She was removed most tenderly several times, but no side was found more easy than the last.

"You will not think me capricious, Charles, though I do give you so much trouble; I find I cannot lie; I must sit up now, and rest on your shoulder."

This change of position was quickly effected, and Louisa's good offices again called into action, though the servant was in the room; for her solicitude to prove her love had taught her a method of paying every little attention in such a silent and efficacious manner, that few attendants on a sick chamber could excel her in those offices where activity rather than strength was required. Mr. Franklin called her a good child, and said—"When I am a gouty old man, Louisa shall wrap my flannels round my legs, she is so handy."

"Louisa will nurse you," said Mrs. Franklin, "not only because she loves you, but because she will remember how much her mother owes you."

There was a difficulty in the pronunciation of these words that affected and somewhat alarmed her auditors. Louisa, starting from her father's knee, took her mother's hand and silently pressed it to her lips.

"You will remember this, my dear child, I am sure you will," still more faintly articulated the languid mother.

Louisa, unable to reply, pressed the cold hand with redoubled ardour to her trembling lips.

Mrs. Franklin, as she withdrew it, gently raised herself, and clasping both her hands, for a few moments seemed, in silent devotion, to be begging blessings on the head of her child and her husband; as if exhausted by the effort, she fell back into the arms of Mr. Franklin, and Louisa partaking her feelings, dropped on her knees before them, while her father's streaming eyes looked up to heaven for blessings on both. In the silent pause which ensued, the faint breath of his beloved wife ceased to play upon his cheek; he listened, but no sound was heard; alarmed, he cried—"Louisa, your mother is fainting; give me the salts;" but Louisa gazed, unable to move. Betty flew to his assistance, and from her lips the dreadful truth found utterance—if that truth should be called dreadful, which proclaimed the emancipation of a soul thus purified from earthly sorrows to heavenly bliss; snatched in the very moment of adoration, and with a look of humble confidence, still stamped on its lovely features, that spoke the divine composure which illumined its departing moments. Yet death is ever found awful, even under its mildest form; a kind of horror, which suspended grief, seized on the faculties of the astonished child, and for a short time absorbed every other emotion, but the bitter anguish of her father awoke her to a sense of her incalculable loss, at the same time that it called her to pity his stronger sense of acute suffering; and the first words she uttered, were—"My father! oh, my poor, poor father!"

That father clasped her to his aching heart, and while his tears first freely flowed with hers, felt that heaven had left him one jewel from the wreck of former happiness, which, though unequal to bestowing comfort, yet ought to save him from despair.

As we do not wish to dwell on scenes which would recall sensations of severe anguish to such of our readers as have lost near relations, and cannot be readily conceived by those who have not, we shall pass over a few succeeding days, and observe only, that, on the morning preceding Mrs. Franklin's funeral, at a very early hour, when even the eyes of the widower were sealed by the short and broken slumbers which visit the pillow of the afflicted, Louisa stole from her chamber, and, creeping on tiptoe to the housekeeper's room, she took thence the key of the chamber where her mother lay, and carefully opening the door, she entered the room, and sitting down by the corpse for the last time, earnestly and fondly contemplated those features so soon to be consigned to their last abode. Her mind, naturally vigorous, had soon recovered from its first emotion of terror, and was now enabled to feel a melancholy but sacred pleasure in gazing one moment on the faded ruin before her, and the next, in lifting her heart towards that divine mansion, where she believed the spirit of her beloved mother was now rejoicing in the presence of her God, and where she ardently desired to partake her felicity. Her little heart, new to the world, and a stranger to its blandishments, felt simply a desire to join her beloved parent; and she knelt down by the coffin, earnestly praying that herself and her father might soon be permitted to join her mother in heaven; when recollecting how often that mother had informed her that obedience and patience were the duties to which, as creatures and Christians, we were more immediately called, she changed the nature of her request, and besought the great "Giver of Good" to imprint on her mind every precept of the departed saint before her, and make her a blessing to her father, that she might be worthy of her mother.

As Louisa rose, a sweet and tranquil sense of the Divine goodness spread over her mind, and composed the agitation of her heart; she audibly pronounced a resolution of always obeying her dear mamma, and beseeching God to direct her in all things; and then, kissing the pale cheek of the corpse, and carefully covering the face, she departed unseen, with a heart afflicted but devoutly resigned to heaven, and sensible of its support and mercy.