with energy; and raising herself on her arm. "It is long since I have
felt how unreasonable it was to throw any blame upon you--the mere and
passive instrument of fate. If I have forborne to see you, it was not
from an angry feeling, but from a reluctant weakness. God bless and
preserve you, my dear cousin! I know that your own heart has bled as
profusely as ours; and it was but this day that I told my father, if we
never met again, to express to you some kind message as a last memorial
from me. Don't weep, Walter! It is a fearful thing to see men weep! It is
only once that I have seen him weep,--that was long, long ago! He has no
tears in the hour of dread and danger. But no matter, this is a bad
world, Walter, and I am tired of it. Are not you? Why do you look so at
me, Ellinor? I am not mad! Has she told you that I am, Walter? Don't
believe her! Look at me! I am calm and collected! Yet to-morrow is--O
God! O God!--if--if!--"

Madeline covered her face with her hands, and became suddenly silent,
though only for a short time; when she again lifted up her eyes, they
encountered those of Walter; as through those blinding and agonised
tears, which are only wrung from the grief of manhood, he gazed upon that
face on which nothing of herself, save the divine and unearthly
expression which had always characterised her loveliness, was left.

"Yes, Walter, I am wearing fast away--fast beyond the power of chance!
Thank God, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, if the worst happen,
we cannot be divided long. Ere another Sabbath has passed, I may be with
him in Paradise! What cause shall we then have for regret?"

Ellinor flung herself on her sister's neck, sobbing violently.--"Yes, we
shall regret you are not with us, Ellinor; but you will also soon grow
tired of the world; it is a sad place--it is a wicked place--it is full