earth; but my wishes are terrible--their power goes beyond my
thought--and there is no hope for me, if my words brought Mary harm."

"But," I said, "you do not know that she is dead. Even now, you
hoped she might be alive. Listen to me," and I told her the tale I
have already told you, giving it all in the driest manner, for I
wanted to recall the clear sense that I felt almost sure she had
possessed in her younger days, and by keeping up her attention to
details, restrain the vague wildness of her grief.

She listened with deep attention, putting from time to time such
questions as convinced me I had to do with no common intelligence,
however dimmed and shorn by solitude and mysterious sorrow. Then she
took up her tale; and in few brief words, told me of her wanderings
abroad in vain search after her daughter; sometimes in the wake of
armies, sometimes in camp, sometimes in city. The lady, whose
waiting-woman Mary had gone to be, had died soon after the date of
her last letter home; her husband, the foreign officer, had been
serving in Hungary, whither Bridget had followed him, but too late to
find him. Vague rumours reached her that Mary had made a great
marriage: and this sting of doubt was added,--whether the mother
might not be close to her child under her new name, and even hearing
of her every day; and yet never recognizing the lost one under the
appellation she then bore. At length the thought took possession of
her, that it was possible that all this time Mary might be at home at
Coldholme, in the Trough of Bolland, in Lancashire, in England; and
home came Bridget, in that vain hope, to her desolate hearth, and
empty cottage. Here she had thought it safest to remain; if Mary was
in life, it was here she would seek for her mother.