Every day and every successive attempt to penetrate this painful mystery will, I trust, furnish us with additional materials for success." "May God grant it!" replied her ladyship; "for if we fail, my wounds will have been again torn open in vain.

Better a thousand times that that hope had never reached me." "True, indeed, madam," replied the stranger; "but still take what comfort you can.

Think of your brother-in-law; he also has lost his child, and bears it well." "Ah, yes," she replied, "but you forget that he has one still left, and that I am childless.

If there be a solitary being on earth, it is a childless and a widowed mother--a widow who has known a mother's love--a wife who has experienced the tender and manly affection of a devoted husband." "I grant," he replied, "that it is, indeed, a bitter fate." "As for my brother-in-law," she proceeded, "the child which God, in his love, has spared to him is a compensation almost for any loss.

I trust he loves and cherishes her as he ought, and as I am told she deserves.
There has been no communication between us ever since my marriage.
Edward and he, though brothers, were as different as day and night.
Unless once or twice, I never even saw my niece, and only then at a distance; nor has a word ever passed between us.