When her first baby, a little girl, was born, Mrs. Hartley wept
bitterly and refused (like Rachel) to be comforted. Her husband
could not understand it at all, and was greatly grieved that she
should be so down-hearted when they had both every reason, to be
happy. Beatrice besought him to forgive her weakness, and explained
that it was only now that she was a mother that she fully realized
the anguish her own mother must have suffered at parting with her,
and she implored him as he loved her to exert himself to find her
mother and make her happy. Had his wife told him to lie down whilst
she drove a carriage-wheel across his neck, Mr. Hartley would have
unhesitatingly obeyed her; how readily, then, he set about finding
what most men are so glad to be without, viz., a mother-in-law, can
easily be imagined. He promised his wife that so soon as business
permitted him he would take steps to discover her mother's
whereabouts, but that night he was awakened out of a deep sleep by
cries of terror from his wife; she had had a dream, she said, that
her mother hung over a precipice, looking up to her for help, which,
while she hastened to give, she saw her mother sink into the yawning
abyss, uttering shrieks of agony. Hartley was beside himself with
fright; he thought his wife would lose her reason, and so he quieted
her by assuring her that he would write the next day to get
information, acting on which he would set out immediately on his
search.
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