Nellie Netterville; or, One of the Transplanted, Chapter XV-XVII [pp. 736-752]

Nellie zVettervi,;ille.
door just as Nellie entered and knelt
down by her mother's side.
More than a hundred years later
than the period of which there is
question in this tale, the treatment of
prisoners in the Dublin Newgate was
so horrible and revolting to the commonest sense of decency and humanity as to demand a positive interference on the part of government.
There is nothing, therefore, very astonishing in the fact, that the state
in which Nellie found her mother
filled her brimful with sorrow and
dismay. The cell in which she was
confined was low, and damp, and
dark, and this she might have expected, and was in some degree prepared for; but she had not counted
on the utter misery of its appointments; and the sight of her pale mother - death already haunting her
dark eyes, and written unmistakably
on her ghastly features - stretched
upon the clammy pavement, a heap
of dirty straw her only bed, and a
tattered blanket her only covering,
was such a shock and surprise to
Nellie that, instead of joyfully annotuncing the fact of her reprieve to
the poor captive, asthe had intended,
she fell upon her knees beside her,
and wept over her like a child.
"Mother! mother!" was all that
she could say for sobbing, as she
took her mother's hand in hers and
covered it with tears and kisses. Mrs.
Netterville appeared for a moment too
much overcome to speak, or even
move, but gradually a faint flush passed over her wan face, and her eyes
at last grew brighter and more lifelike, when Nellie, making a strong and
desperate effort to command her feelings, suddenly wiped away her tears
and bent over the bed to kiss her.
"O mother! mother!" the poor
girl could not refrain from once more
sobbing, "is it thus that I see you
after all?"
"Nay, child," the mother gasped
with difficulty, "you should rather
thank God for it on your knees. See
you not it is an especial mercy? If
I had not burst a blood-vessel to-day,
to-morrow - yes, to-morrow" - a
shudder ran through her wasted
frame, and she broke off suddenly.
"But I have brought you a reprieve," sobbed Nellie, hardly knowing what she said, or the danger of
saying it at that moment-"a reprieve which is almost a pardon.
Only a few days more, and you would
have been free, whereas now-now"
-tears choked her utterance, and,
hiding her face on her mother's scanty coverlet, she sobbed as if her
heart were breaking. Mrs. Netterville half raised herself on her pallet
bed. For one brief moment she
struggled with that desire for life
which lurks in every human breast,
and which Nellie's exclamation had
called forth afresh in hers. For one
brief moment that phantom of life
and liberty, lost just as they had
been found again-lost just as they
had become more than ever precious
in her eyes-that contrast between
what was to be her portion and what
it might have been, deluged her soul
with a bitterness more intolerable
than that of death itself, and her frail
body shook and trembled like an
aspen leaf beneath the new weight of
misery thus laid upon it. That one
unguarded word of Nellie's had, in
fact, changed, as if by magic, all her
thoughts and feelings and aspirations.
Death and life, and health and sickness, freedom and captivity, had each
put on a new and unexpected aspect
in her eyes, and that very thing which,
only a minute or two before, had
seemed to her soul as a source of
real consolation, had suddenly taken
the guise of a great misfortune. It
was as if God himself had mocked
her with feigned mercy; a weaker
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