"Oh, Rose! Rose! take care, for God's sake! your dress! you'll kill
yourself! oh, God help us!"
There were a few moments--awful moments of struggle--when none knew or
remembered what they did; a moment more and Rose lay panting in her
father's arms, enveloped in a thick blanket which he had thrown around her
burning night-dress. The fire was extinguished, the babe lay unawakened,
and only the dark flecks of tinder scattered over the bed, and the trampled
mass on the floor, told what had been. But Rose had breathed the hot breath
of the flame, deadly to human life, and no water could quench that inward
fire.
A word serves to explain all. The child's nurse had carelessly set a lamp
too near the curtains, and the night breeze had wafted them into the flame.
The apartment of Rose opened into the nursery, and as she stood in her
night-dress before her mirror, arranging her hair, she saw the flashing of
the flame, and, in the one idea of saving her little sister, forgot every
other. That act of self-forgetfulness was her last earthly act; a few short
hours of patient suffering were all that remained to her.
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