““Kate stood by that low bed, looking down earnestly on its occupant—that occupant that was now a person, and soon would be—O, fearful metamorphosis!—but a thing,—why was it that the recollection of her own mother flashed so arrow-swift, so lightning-bright, across her? What possible resemblance could there be found between this poor plebeian, with the swollen, debased features, with the coarse, weather-stained, care-wrinkled skin, and her mother, with her patient, saintly face and spirit eyes? What resemblance indeed! Why this, just this one, which struck Kate through and through: she had seen on both the stamp of the valley of the shadow of death.[301] There is that much resemblance between us all. We acknowledge it in words; but we do not often feel it to our heart’s core; do not realise how near of kin that ineradicable stain of mortality makes us all. The””
