an you would think perhaps--but I affected to care
nothing for them, in the hope that you would so be brought to regret
them the less. I was not insensible, indeed. I might have felt happier
if I had been. Dear mama,' said Kate, in great agitation, 'I know no
difference between this home and that in which we were all so happy
for so many years, except that the kindest and gentlest heart that ever
ached on earth has passed in peace to heaven.'

'Kate my dear, Kate,' cried Mrs Nickleby, folding her in her arms.

'I have so often thought,' sobbed Kate, 'of all his kind words--of the
last time he looked into my little room, as he passed upstairs to bed,
and said "God bless you, darling." There was a paleness in his face,
mama--the broken heart--I know it was--I little thought so--then--'

A gush of tears came to her relief, and Kate laid her head upon her
mother's breast, and wept like a little child.

It is an exquisite and beautiful thing in our nature, that when the
heart is touched and softened by some tranquil happiness or affectionate
feeling, the memory of the dead comes over it most powerfully and
irresistibly. It would almost seem as though our better thoughts and
sympathies were charms, in virtue of which the soul is enabled to hold
some vague and mysterious intercourse with the spirits of those whom
we dearly loved in life. Alas! how often and how long may those patient
angels hover above us, watching for the spell which is so seldom
uttered, and so soon forgotten!

Poor Mrs Nickleby, accustomed to give ready utterance to whatever
came uppermost in her mind, had never conceived the possibility of her
daughter's dwelling upon these thoughts in secret, the more especially
as no hard trial or querulous reproach had ever drawn them from her. But
now, when the happiness of all that Nicholas had just told them, and
of their new and peaceful life, brought these recollections so strongly
upon Kate that she could not suppress them, Mrs Nickleby began to have
a glimmering that she had been rather thoughtless now and then, and was
conscious of something like self-reproach as she embraced her daughter,
and yielded to the emotions which such a conversation naturally
awakened.

There was a mighty bustle that night, and a vast quantity of preparation
for the expected visitor, and a very large nosegay was brought from a
gardener's hard by, and cut up into a number of very small ones, with
which Mrs Nickleby would have garn