ing you even now, for remembering her so
kindly, and loving her still so much."

Alarmed at the excess of my emotion, which I could no longer
command, Mrs. Hatton's distress was so great, that she almost
groaned at finding that, instead of soothing me, every word
that she uttered increased my agitation. At last, recovering
myself, I abruptly changed the subject, and a few minutes
after she took her leave.

Later that day I had a long conversation with my aunt; she
explained to me, that the doctors had assured her, that it was
of the greatest importance that my uncle should spend the
following winter in a southern climate; that he was himself
extremely opposed to this plan, chiefly on account of his
inveterate dislike to leaving Elmsley for such a length of
time; and that, she was afraid that if he returned there at
all that year, she should never be able to persuade him to
leave it again. She seemed very much out of spirits; and she,
who seldom gave way to her feelings, although their secret
workings were evident enough to me, who knew every turn of her
countenance, at this moment seemed unable to struggle with her
deep depression.

After a few efforts to overcome it, she threw her arms round
me, and hid her face on my neck.

"Dearest child," she said, "never let me suffer through you;
anything else I can bear. I see things through a dark mist
to-day, and there is a gloom about me which I cannot shake off.
I do not often talk to you of myself, Ellen, at least not
lately--not since the days when we lived but for each other,
and I would not do so now, if an irresistible impulse did not
urge me to it. In a few days you will be married, and then
will come a separation, which I shall bear with courage; but
which will require courage, my Ellen, for I have loved you too
much as an idol, too much as a treasure, which nothing could
rob me of, and to which I have clung with all the tenacity of
a crushed but ardent spirit. All my life I have had to meet
indifference, and to struggle with disappointment in various
forms. Self-devotion was the dream of my youth; I conceived no
other happiness, and wished to live for no other purpose. My
father was one of those men who can so little understand this
sort of feeling in others, that, with perfect kindness and
perfect candour, I am sure he would have said, if his daughter
had done for him what the Russian girl, Elizabeth, did for her
father, 'I suppose she was tired of Siberia,