Rose drew back the screen, and there was a sweet little berceau that had
once been Josephine's own, and in it, sunk deep in snow-white lawn, was
a sleeping child, that lay there looking as a rose might look could it
fall upon new-fallen snow.
At sight of it Josephine uttered a little cry, not loud but deep--ay, a
cry to bring tears into the eye of the hearer, and she stood trembling
from head to foot, her hands clasped, and her eye fascinated and fixed
on the cradle.
"My child under this roof! What have you done?" but her eye, fascinated
and fixed, never left the cradle.
"I saw you languishing, dying, for want of him."
"Oh, if anybody should come?" But her eye never stirred an inch from the
cradle.
"No, no, no! the door is locked. Jacintha watches below; there is no
dan--Ah, oh, poor sister!"
For, as Rose was speaking, the young mother sprang silently upon her
child. You would have thought she was going to kill him; her head reared
itself again and again like a crested snake's, and again and again and
again and again plunged down upon the child, and she kissed his little
body from head to foot with soft violence, and murmured, through her
streaming tears, "My child! my darling! my angel! oh, my poor boy! my
child! my child!"
I will ask my female readers of every degree to tell their brothers and
husbands all the young noble did: how she sat on the floor, and had her
child on her bosom; how she smiled over it through her tears; how she
purred over it; how she, the stately one, lisped and prattled over it;
and how life came pouring into her heart from it.
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