resembled epilepsy. After a lapse of ten minutes or so, the spasmodic
action, having probably wasted her physical strength, ceased, and she
lay in a quiet trance; so quiet, indeed, that it might have passed for
death, were it not for the deep expression of pain and suffering which
lay upon her face, and betrayed the fury of the moral tempest which
swept through her heart and brain. All the mother's grief now was
hushed--all the faculties of her soul were now concentrated on her
daughter, and absorbed by the intense anxiety she felt for her recovery.
She sat behind the poor girl, and drew her body back so that her head
rested on her bosom, to which she pressed her, kissing her passive lips
with streaming eyes.

"O, darling Nannie!" she exclaimed, "strive and rouse yourself; it is
your loving mother that asks you. Waken up, poor misled and heart-broken
girl, waken up; I forgive you all your errors. O, avillish machree
(sweetness of my heart), don't you hear that it is your mother's voice
that's spakin' to you!"

She was still, however, insensible; and her little brothers were all in
tears about her.

"O mother!" said the oldest, sobbing, "is Nannie dead too? When she went
away from us you bid us not to cry, that she would soon come back; and
now she has only come back to die. Nannie, I'm your own little Frank;
won't you hear me I Nannie, will you never wash my face of a Sunday
morning more? will you never comb down my hair, put the pin in my shirt
collar, and kiss me, as you used to do before we went to Mass together?"

The poor mother was so much overcome by this artless allusion to her
innocent life, involving, as it did, such a manifestation of affection,