no sin
now in all this, but she felt it would be a crime to give her hand to
another, when her whole heart was thus devoted to the dead. There was
something peculiarly soothing to the grateful and affectionate feelings
with which she regarded her aunt and uncle; that she perhaps would be
the only one of all those who had--

"Played
Beneath the same green tree,
Whose voices mingled as they prayed
Around one parent knee"--

would remain with nothing to divert her attention from the pleasing task
of soothing and cheering their advancing years, and her every effort was
now turned towards making her _single_ life, indeed, one of
_blessedness_, by works of good and thoughts of love towards all with
whom she might associate; but in these visions her brother had ever
intimately mingled. She had pictured herself beholding and rejoicing in
his happiness, loving his children as her own, being to them a second
mother. She had fancied herself ever received with joy, a welcome inmate
of her Edward's home, and so strongly had her imagination become
impressed with this idea, that its annihilation appeared to heighten the
anguish with which the news of his untimely fate had overwhelmed her. He
was gone; and it seemed as if she had never, never felt so utterly
desolate before; as if advancing years had entirely lost the soft and
gentle colouring with which they had so lately been invested. It seemed
but a very short interval since she had seen him, the lovely, playful
child, his mother's pet, the admiration of all who looked on him; then
he stood before her, the handsome, manly boy she had parted with, when
he first left the sheltering roof of Oakwood, to become a sailor. Then,
shuddering, she recalled him when they had met again, after a lapse of
suffering in the young life of each; and her too sensitive fancy
conjured up the thought that her fault had not yet been sufficiently
chastised, that he was taken from her because she had loved him too
well; because her deep intense affection for him had caused her once to
forget the mandate of her God. In the deep agony of that thought, it
seemed as if she lived over again those months of suffering, which in a
former pages we have endeavoured to describe.

Humbled to the dust, she recognised the chastising hand of her Maker,
and as if it had only now been committed, she acknowledged and repented
the transgression a moment's powerful temptation had forced her