e! Is she like what you expected, sister?"

The head was raised, but with difficulty; and Agatha met the cheerful,
smiling, loving eyes of her whom people called "poor Elizabeth." Such
thorough content, such admiring pleasure, as that look testified! It
took away all the painful constraint which most people experience on
first coming into the presence of those whom Heaven has afflicted thus;
and made Agatha feel that in putting such an angelic spirit into that
poor distorted body, Heaven had not dealt hardly even with Elizabeth
Harper.

"She is just what I thought," said a voice, thin, but not unmusical.
"You described her well. Come here and kiss me, my dear new sister."

Agatha knelt down and obeyed, with her whole heart in the embrace. Of
all greetings in the family, none had been like this. And not the least
of its sweetness was that her husband seemed so pleased therewith,
looking more like himself than he had done since they entered his
father's doors.

They all sat down and talked for a long time, Elizabeth more cheerfully
than any. She appeared completely versed in the affairs of the whole
family, as though her mind were a hidden gallery in which were clearly
daguerreotyped, and faithfully retained, all impressions of the external
world. She seemed to know everybody and everybody's circumstances--to
have ranged them and theirs distinctly and in order, in the wide, empty
halls of her memory, which could be filled in no other way. For, as
Agatha gradually learned, this spinal disease, withering up the form
from infancy, had been accompanied with such long intervals of acute
physical pain as to prevent all study beyond the commonest acquirements
of her sex. It was not with her, as with some, that the intellect
alone had proved sufficient to make out of a helpless body a noble
and complete human existence; Elizabeth's mind was scarcely above the
average order, or if it had been, suffering had stifled its powers. Her
only possession was the loving heart.

She asked an infinitude of questions, her bright quick eyes seeming to
extort and gain more than the mere verbal answers. She talked a good
deal, throwing more light than Agatha had ever before received on the
manners, characters, and history of the Harper family, the Dugdales, and
Anne Valery. But there was in her speech a certain reticence, as though
all the common gossip of life was in her clear spirit received, sifted,
purified, and then distributed abroad