, you
know it will be necessary that I should justify his choice, by appearing
as beautiful as possible."

"Give the innocent her own way," said her father; "give her, in all that
may gratify the child, her own way, where it is not directly wrong to do
so."

Agnes and she then went up to her room, that she might indulge in that
harmless happiness, which the fiction of hope had, under the mercy of
God, extracted, from the reality of despair.

When the ceremony of the toilette was over, she and her sister returned
to the parlor, and they could notice a slight tinge of color added to
her pale cheek, by the proud consciousness of her beauty. The exertion,
however, she had undergone, considering her extremely weak and exhausted
state of of health was more than she could bear long. But a few minutes
had elapsed after her reappearance in the parlor, when she said--

"Mamma, I am unwell; I want to be undressed, and to go to bed; I am very
faint; help me to bed, mamma--and if you come and stay with me, I shall
tell you every thing about my prospects in life--yes, and in death, too;
because I have prospects in death--but ah," she added, shuddering, "they
are dark--dark!"

Seldom, indeed, was a family tried like this family; and never was the
endurance of domestic love, and its triumph over the chilling habit of
affliction, more signally manifested than in the undying tenderness of
their hearts and hands, in all that was necessary to her comfort, or
demanded by the childish caprices of her malady.

On going upstairs, she kissed them all as usual, but they then
discovered, for the first time, in all its bitterness, what a dark and
melancholy enjoyment it is to kiss the lips of a maniac, who has loved
us, and whom we still must love.

"Jane," said William, struggling to be firm, "kiss me, too, before you
go."

"Come to me, William," said she, "for I am not able to go to you. Oh, my
brother, if I did not love you, I would be very wicked."

The affectionate young man kissed her, and, as he did, the big tears
rolled down his cheeks. He wept aloud.

"I never, never gave her up till now," he exclaimed; "but"--and his face
darkened into deep indignation as he spoke, "we shall see about it
yet, Jane dear. I shall allow a month or two--she may recover; but if
I suffer this to go unav----" he paused; "I meant nothing," he added,
"except that I will not despair of her yet."

About ten days restored her to something like health,