I reappeared in the balcony, and said a
few words of gratitude to them and their noble nation. They cheered, and
dispersed.
"My heart was in a glow. I turned my eyes toward New York: a fortnight
more, and my parents should greet me as a European doctress, if not a
British.
"The excitement had been too great; I sunk, a little exhausted, on the
sofa. They bought me a letter. It was black-edged. I tore it open with a
scream. My father was dead."
CHAPTER XIV.
"I WAS prostrated, stupefied. I don't know what I did, or how long I sat
there. But Cornelia came to congratulate me, and found me there like
stone, with the letter in my hand. She packed up my clothes, and took me
home with her. I made no resistance. I seemed all broken and limp, soul
and body, and not a tear that day.
"Oh, sir, how small everything seems beside bereavement! My troubles, my
insults, were nothing now; my triumph nothing; for I had no father left
to be proud of it with me.
"I wept with anguish a hundred times a day. Why had I left New York? Why
had I not foreseen this every-day calamity, and passed every precious
hour by his side I was to lose?
"Terror seized me.
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