ir Ladyships thought otherwise,' he said,
with a twinkle in his eye, 'why did they not come down themselves?'

Mervyn made a gesture of horror, but all knew that there was little
danger. Augusta was always 'so low' at the sight of illness, and unless
Phoebe had been the patient out of sight, Juliana would not have brought
her husband; obvious as would have been the coming of an elder sister
when the sickness of the younger dragged on so slowly and wearily.

No one went through so much as Miss Fennimore. Each hour of her
attendance on Bertha stamped the sense of her own failure, and of the
fallacies to which her life had been dedicated. The sincerity, honour,
and modesty that she had inculcated, had been founded on self-esteem
alone; and when they had proved inadequate to prevent their breach, their
outraged relics had prompted the victim to despair and die. Intellectual
development and reasoning powers had not availed one moment against
inclination and self-will, and only survived in the involuntary murmurs
of a disordered nervous system. All this had utterly overthrown that
satisfaction in herself and her own moral qualities in which Miss
Fennimore had always lived; she had become sensible of the deep flaws in
all that she had admired in her own conduct; and her reason being already
prepared by her long and earnest study to accept the faith in its
fulness, she had begun to crave after the Atoning Mercy of which she
sorely felt the need. But if it be hard for one who has never questioned
to take home individually the efficacy of the great Sacrifice, how much
harder for one taught to deny the Godhead which rendered the Victim
worthy to satisfy Eternal Justice? She accepted the truth, but the
gracious words would not reach her spirit; they were to her as a feast in
a hungry man's dream. Robert alone was aware of the struggles through
which she was passing, and he could do little in direct aid of her; the
books--even the passages of Scripture that he found for her--seemed to
fall short; it was as though the sufferer in the wilderness lay in sight
of the brazen serpent, but his eyes were holden that he could not see it.

Only the governess's strong and untaxed health could have carried her
through her distress and fatigue, for she continued to engross the most
trying share of the nursing, anxious to shield Phoebe from even the
knowledge of all the miseries of Bertha's nights, when the poor child
would start on her