CHAPTER XXI 304 shrank from my touch -- the glazing eyes shunned my gaze .
" Love me , then , or hate me , as you will ," I said at last , " you have my full and free forgiveness : ask now for God ' s , and be at peace ."
Poor , suffering woman ! it was too late for her to make now the effort to change her habitual frame of mind : living , she had ever hated me -- dying , she must hate me still .
The nurse now entered , and Bessie followed . I yet lingered half-an-hour longer , hoping to see some sign of amity : but she gave none . She was fast relapsing into stupor ; nor did her mind again rally : at twelve o ' clock that night she died . I was not present to close her eyes , nor were either of her daughters . They came to tell us the next morning that all was over . She was by that time laid out . Eliza and I went to look at her : Georgiana , who had burst out into loud weeping , said she dared not go . There was stretched Sarah Reed ' s once robust and active frame , rigid and still : her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid ; her brow and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul . A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me . I gazed on it with gloom and pain : nothing soft , nothing sweet , nothing pitying , or hopeful , or subduing did it inspire ; only a grating anguish for HER woes -- not MY loss -- and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a form .
Eliza surveyed her parent calmly . After a silence of some minutes she observed -
" With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age : her life was shortened by trouble ." And then a spasm constricted her mouth for an instant : as it passed away she turned and left the room , and so did I . Neither of us had dropt a tear .