And yet, there raged within her breast a volcano, the violence of whose fire would soon exhaust, and leave her scarred and blasted forever.

At that moment it kindled with a blaze, that scorched her heart, but she felt it not.

Her whole being was transformed into a mass of ruin.

She felt not the strain on the tendrils of her mind; that her overwrought brain was swaying between madness and reason.

She only saw the lifeless lineaments of her child--the first pledge of her wedded affection--dead before her.
It came to her like a wild dream, a mere hallucination--an imagination of a distempered mind.