which cut off the little prattlers at the early age when they most
wind themselves round the heart of the parents.

In the beginning of the year 1658, Major Bridgenorth was childless;
ere it ended, he had a daughter, indeed, but her birth was purchased
by the death of an affectionate wife, whose constitution had been
exhausted by maternal grief, and by the anxious and harrowing
reflection, that from her the children they had lost derived that
delicacy of health, which proved unable to undergo the tear and wear
of existence. The same voice which told Bridgenorth that he was the
father of a living child (it was the friendly voice of Lady Peveril),
communicated to him the melancholy intelligence that he was no longer
a husband. The feelings of Major Bridgenorth were strong and deep,
rather than hasty and vehement; and his grief assumed the form of a
sullen stupor, from which neither the friendly remonstrances of Sir
Geoffrey, who did not fail to be with his neighbour at this
distressing conjuncture, even though he knew he must meet the
Presbyterian pastor, nor the ghastly exhortations of this latter
person, were able to rouse the unfortunate widower.

At length Lady Peveril, with the ready invention of a female sharped
by the sight of distress and the feelings of sympathy, tried on the
sufferer one of those experiments by which grief is often awakened
from despondency into tears. She placed in Bridgenorth's arms the
infant whose birth had cost him so dear, and conjured him to remember
that his Alice was not yet dead, since she survived in the helpless
child she had left to his paternal care.

"Take her away--take her away!" said the unhappy man, and they were
the first words he had spoken; "let me not look on her--it is but