We do not believe at all times in the genuineness of brotherly or
sisterly love. Perhaps familiarity has deadened its keenness. Like
the appreciation of the sunlight which rushes with thrilling force on
the victim of blindness, separation or misfortune may rouse the dormant
affection and prove its nobility and its power; but in our experience
manifest fraternal charity is one of those things even the wise man
knew to be rare under the sun. Where we have been privileged to look
in behind the veil of the family circle, we are more convinced than
ever that fraternal affection an all the boasted nobility of sisterly
love dwindle down to a series of petty quarrels and jealousies as
painful as they are unchristian and unbecoming. The reserve, or rather
the hypocrisy of politeness, put on before strangers, is no criterion
of the inward domestic life. Some one has said of ladies, "A point
yielded or a pardon begged in public means so many hair-pullings
behind the scenes." But this is too sweeping; there are noble, glorious
exceptions in families where religion reigns, where fraternal charity
finds a congenial soil; for it blooms in the fragrance of the other
virtues, and is the first characteristic of a pious family. The world
around are told to look for this as a sign by which they are to
recognize the disciples of Him who loved so much.

Aloysia, in a true, genuine feeling of love, was bound in adamantine
chains to her sister. Time and fortune, that shatter all human
institutions and prove human feelings, consolidated the union of their
hearts and their destinies. A stranger on stronger proof of the
influence of sisterly affection could not be adduced; it dragged the
beautiful, blushing Aloysia from the sphere of girlhood, to follow
in the track of hypocrisy and of bloodshed so desperately trodden by
her brave sister.