She began to count on her
fingers--it was the sixteenth day since the birth of the child,--sixteen
days exactly since she had written to Sir Philip Errington, informing
him of his wife's danger--and the danger was not yet past. Thinking over
all that had happened, and the apparent hopelessness of the case, she
suddenly took a strange idea into her head. Retiring to a distant
corner, she dropped on her knees.
"O Lord, God Almighty!" she said in a fierce whisper, "Behold, I have
been Thy servant until now! I have wrestled with Thee in prayer till I
am past all patience! If Thou wilt not hear my petition, why callest
Thou Thyself good? Is it good to crush the already fallen? Is it good to
have no mercy on the sorrowful? Wilt Thou condemn the innocent without
reason? If so, thou art not the Holy One I imagined! Send forth Thy
power now--now, while there is time! Rescue her that is lying under the
shadow of death--for how has she offended Thee that she should die?
Delay no longer, or how shall I put my trust in Thee? Send help speedily
from Thine everlasting habitations--or, behold! I do forsake Thee--and
my soul shall seek elsewhere for Eternal Justice!"
As she finished this extraordinary, half-threatening, and entirely
blasphemous petition, the boisterous gale roared wildly round the house
joining in chorus with the stormy dash of waves upon the coast--a chorus
that seemed to Ulrika's ears like the sound of fiendish and derisive
laughter.
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