The doctor, however, prepared them for the
worst, and in confirmation of his opinion, the spasms returned with
dreadful violence, and in the lapse of two hours after his visit,
this pious and virtuous woman, after suffering unexampled agony with a
patience and fortitude that could not be surpassed, expired in the midst
of her afflicted family.
It often happens in domestic life, that in cases where long and
undisturbed affection is for the first time deprived of its object by
death, there supervenes upon the sorrow of many, a feeling of awful
sympathy with that individual whose love for the object has been, the
greatest, and whose loss is of course the most irreparable. So was it
with the M'Mahons. Thomas M'Mahon himself could not bear to witness the
sufferings of his wife, nor to hear her moans. He accordingly left the
house, and walked about the garden and farm-yard, in a state little
short of actual distraction. When the last scene was over, and her
actual sufferings closed for ever, the outrage of grief among his
children became almost hushed from a dread of witnessing the sufferings
of their father; and for the time a great portion of their own sorrow
was merged in what they felt for him. Nor was this feeling confined
to themselves. His neighbors and acquaintances, on hearing of Mrs.
M'Mahon's death, almost all exclaimed:--
"Oh, what will become of him? they are nothing an will forget her soon,
as is natural, well as they loved her; but poor Tom, oh! what on earth
will become of him?" Every eye, however, now turned toward Bryan, who
was the only one of the family possessed of courage enough to undertake
the task of breaking the heart-rending intelligence to their bereaved
father.
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