Then the tears gushed out from Gertrude’s eyes, and she wept freely and fully the healing tears of youth.

CHAPTER VII.  SISTERS OF MERCY.

“Father, dear father, prithee let me go!”

“What, my child?  Have I not lost all but thee?  Am I to send thee forth to thy death in this terrible city, stricken by the hand of God?”

Into Gertrude’s face there crept a wonderful light and brightness.  Her eyes shone with the intensity of her feeling.

“Father,” she said, “it is even because I hold the city to be smitten by God that I ask thy permission to go forth to minister to the sick and stricken ones.  It seems to me as though in my heart a voice had spoken, saying, ‘Go, and I will be with thee.’  Father, listen, I pray thee.  I heard that voice first, methought, upon the terrible night when they came and took Frederick away.  When mother was next laid low, and as I watched beside her, and watched likewise how Dinah soothed and comforted and assuaged her anguish of mind and body, the voice in my heart grew ever louder and louder.  Whilst she lived, I knew my place was beside her; but it has pleased God to take her away.  No tie binds me here now.  If I stay, I shall but eat out my heart in fruitless longing, shut into these walls, and by no means permitted to sally forth.  From a plague-stricken house I may only go to those smitten with the distemper.  Father, let me go! prithee let me go!  Dinah will take me; she will let me be with her.  Ask her; she will tell thee.”

As the girl made her appeal to her father, the grave-faced, gentle woman who had remained with this household for nigh fourteen days stood quietly by.  Dinah Morse had not quitted the house since the day upon which the hapless Frederick had been stricken down by the fell disease.  For hardly had his remains been borne from the house before the mother fell violently ill of a wasting fever.  At first there were no special indications of the plague in her malady; but after a week’s time these suddenly developed themselves.  From the first she had declared herself smitten by the distemper, and whether this conviction helped to develop the germs of the malady none could say.  But be that as it might, the dreaded tokens appeared upon her body at last, and within three days from that time she lay dead.

All that the kindness of friends and neighbours could avail had been done.  The Harmer family, in particular, had showed so much attention and sympathy in this trying time, that Gertrude was often overcome with shame as she recalled in what uncivil fashion they had been treated by her mother of late years, and how they were now returning good for evil, just at a time when so many men were finding themselves forsaken even by their nearest and dearest in the hour of their affliction.