: to few was it
permitted to feel, while it was yet not too late, the agony of remorse
for pain inflicted, for gratifications withheld; for selfish neglect,
for insufficient love. She remembered vividly what her emotions had
been as a child, on finding her canary dead in its cage;--how she had
wept all day, not so much for its loss as from the recollection of the
many times when she had failed to cheer it with sugar, and groundsel,
and play, and of the number of hours when she had needlessly covered up
its cage in impatience at its song, shutting out its sunshine, and
changing the brightest seasons of its little life into dull night. If
it had been thus with her sister! Many a hasty word, many an unjust
thought, came back now to wring her heart, when she imagined Margaret
sinking in the water,--the soft breathing on which our life so
marvellously hangs, stopped without struggle or cry. How near--how very
near, had Death, in his hovering, stooped towards their home! How
strange, while treading thus precariously the film which covers the
abyss into which all must some day drop, and which may crack under the
feet of any one at any hour,--how strange to be engrossed with petty
jealousies, with selfish cares, and to be unmindful of the great
interests of existence, the exercises of mutual love and trust! Thank
God! it was not too late. Margaret lived to be cherished, to be
consoled for her private griefs, as far as consolation might be
possible; to have her innocent affections redeemed from the waste to
which they now seemed doomed,--gathered gradually up again, and knit
into the interests of the home life in which she was externally bearing
her part. Full of these thoughts, and forgetting how often her best
feelings had melted away beneath the transient heats kindled by the
little provocations of daily life, Hester now believed that Margaret
would never have to suffer from her more,--that their love would be
henceforth like that of angels,--like that which it would have been if
Margaret had really died yesterday. It was yet early, when, in the full
enjoyment of these undoubting thoughts, Hester stood by her sister's
bedside.

Margaret was still sleeping, but with that expression of weariness in
her face which had of late become too common. Hester gazed long at the
countenance, grieving at the languor and anxiety which it revealed. She
had not taken Margaret's suffering to heart,--she had been unfeeling,--
strang