One recollection with frightful velocity following
another, threatened to fire her brain, and make her a fit companion
for the terrific inhabitants, whose groans and shrieks were no
unsubstantial sounds of whistling winds, or startled birds, modulated
by a romantic fancy, which amuse while they affright; but such
tones of misery as carry a dreadful certainty directly to the heart.
What effect must they then have produced on one, true to the touch
of sympathy, and tortured by maternal apprehension!
Her infant's image was continually floating on Maria's sight,
and the first smile of intelligence remembered, as none but a
mother, an unhappy mother, can conceive. She heard her half speaking
half cooing, and felt the little twinkling fingers on her burning
bosom--a bosom bursting with the nutriment for which this cherished
child might now be pining in vain. From a stranger she could indeed
receive the maternal aliment, Maria was grieved at the thought--
but who would watch her with a mother's tenderness, a mother's
self-denial?
The retreating shadows of former sorrows rushed back in a
gloomy train, and seemed to be pictured on the walls of her prison,
magnified by the state of mind in which they were viewed--Still
she mourned for her child, lamented she was a daughter, and
anticipated the aggravated ills of life that her sex rendered almost
inevitable, even while dreading she was no more.
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