"O Rosa, she is your own flesh and blood! and, as her father said, a

mere baby yet! You said, too, that she refused to assign any cause

to him for her singular conduct."

"She might better have made open outcry than have left upon his mind

the impression that I had banished her cruelly and unnecessarily.

But I despair of giving you an idea of how provoking she can be. She

is a Chilton, through and through, in feature, manner, and

disposition--one of those 'goody' children, you know! a class of

animals that are simply intolerable to me. She is too precocious and

unbaby-like to be in the least interesting. You should have seen my

little Violet to understand what a constant disappointment Florence

is. She was myself in miniature, and moreover the most witching,

prankish, peppery elf that was ever made. The best trait in

Florence's character was her love for her baby-sister. She gave up

everything to her while she was alive, and they told me that she

would not eat, and scarcely slept, for days after her death. Her

father will have it that she is singularly sensitive, and has

marvellous depths of feeling; but if this be so, it is queer I never

found it out. Nobody could help adoring Violet--my aweet, lost,

beautiful angel!"

The hysterical sobs were pumping up the tears now in hot torrents,

and these Mrs. Sutton was fain to assuage by loving arts she would

not--but for the danger of allowing them to flow--have been in the

temper to employ, so full was her heart of yearning pity for the

hardly-used babe, and displeasure at the mother's weak selfishness.

It was easier to forgive and forget Rosa's sins; to lessen, in the

retrospect, her worst faults into foibles, than it would have been

to overlook the more venal failings of one less mercurial, and whose

personal fascinations did not equal hers.

Ere the close of another day, Mrs. Sutton had excused her unnatural

insensibility to her child's virtues and affection, by representing

to herself how fearfully disease had warped judgment and perception;

had cast over the enormities she could not palliate the pall of

solemn remembrance of the truth that death's dark door was already

as surely shut between mother and daughter, as if the grave held the

former. A week of chill March rains and wind was disastrous to the

patient, who had seemed to draw her main supplies of strength from

the sunshine admitted freely to her room, with the spring air,

redolent with the delicious odors of the freshly-turned earth, the

budding trees, and early blossoms from the garden heneath her

windows. She shrank and shivered under the ungenial sky, while the

drizzling mist soaked life and animation out of the fragile body.

Occasional fits of delirium, increased difficulty of breathing, and

a steady decline of the slender remains of vital force, warned her

attendants that their care would not be required much longer. She

was still obstinate in her disbelief of the grave nature of her

malady. The most distant reference to her decease would arouse her

to angry refutation of the hinted doubt of her recovery, and excited

her to offer proof of her declaration that she was less ill than

others supposed; she would summon up a poor counterfeit of energy

and mirth, more ghastly than her previous lassitude; deny that she

suffered from any cause, save the unfailing nervous depression

consequent upon the unfavorable weather.




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