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of safety for herself, she ceased to lament for her dying child, but shed
kindly, bitter tears for the grief I should experience in losing her. While
she lay, life almost suspended, she felt a warm, soft hand on her brow, and
a gentle female voice asked her, with expressions of tender compassion, if
she could not rise? That another human being, sympathetic and kind, should
exist near, roused her; half rising, with clasped hands, and fresh
springing tears, she entreated her companion to seek for me, to bid me
hasten to my dying child, to save him, for the love of heaven, to save
him!
The woman raised her; she led her under shelter, she entreated her to
return to her home, whither perhaps I had already returned. Idris easily
yielded to her persuasions, she leaned on the arm of her friend, she
endeavoured to walk on, but irresistible faintness made her pause again and
again.
Quickened by the encreasing storm, we had hastened our return, our little
charge was placed before Adrian on his horse. There was an assemblage of
persons under the portico of our house, in whose gestures I instinctively
read some heavy change, some new misfortune. With swift alarm, afraid to
ask a single question, I leapt from my horse; the spectators saw me, knew
me, and in awful silence divided to make way for me. I snatched a light,
and rushing up stairs, and hearing a groan, without reflection I threw open
the door of the first room that presented itself. It was quite dark; but,
as I stept within, a pernicious scent assailed my senses, producing
sickening qualms, which made their way to my very heart, while I felt my
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