and that was your book. Even when I am feeling worst--when my chest
aches, you know--I grow quite happy when I think of what the papers wrote
about you: the _Times_ and the _Saturday Review_, and the _Spectator_,
and the rest of them. They said that you had genius--true genius, you
remember, and that they expected one day to see you at the head of the
literature of the time, or near it. The Printer-devil can't take away
that, Gussie. He can take the money; but he can't say that he wrote the
book; though," she added, with a touch of childish spite and vivacity, "I
have no doubt that he would if he could. And then there were those
letters from the great authors up in London; yes, I often think of them
too. Well, dearest old girl, the best of it is that I know it is all
true. I _know_, I can't tell you how, that you will be a great woman in
spite of all the Meesons in creation; for somehow you will get out of his
power, and, if you don't, five years is not all one's life--at least,
not if people have a life. At the worst, he can only take all the money.
And then, when you are great and rich and famous, and more beautiful than
ever, and when the people turn their heads as you come into the room,
like we used to at school when the missionary came to lecture, I know
that you will think of me (because you won't forget me as some sisters
do), and of how, years and years before, so long ago that the time looks
quite small when you think of it, I told you that it would be so just
before I died."

Here the girl, who had been speaking with a curious air of certainty and
with a gravity and deliberation extraordinary for one so young, suddenly
broke off to cough. Her sister threw herself on her knees beside her,
and, clasping her in her arms, implored her in broken accents not to talk
of dying. Jeannie drew Augusta's golden head down on her breast and
stroked it.