these your feelings?"

"Alas, no," replied Emma; "I love the world too well, and have spent
many wretched, sleepless nights because I was unwilling to leave it:
but that time is passed. If I have any fear now, it is that my work on
earth will not be well done before I am called away."

Susan turned a wondering eye upon the pale, weary-looking girl, and for
a moment forgot her intense sympathy for herself. "You are sick," said
she, with an expression of real interest and concern.

"Yes," replied Emma, "that is evident. My friends have tried to hide it
from me, and from themselves. They have sent me from place to place,
but death is following me everywhere. _I_ never felt it so surely as I
do this morning:" and Emma laid her head upon the moss-turf beside
Susan. She looked like a faded lily, as she lay there; her white dress
scarcely more white than the forehead and cheek upon which her dark
damp hair rested heavily. Susan took a handkerchief from her pocket,
and wrung it in the clear, cool waters of the brook, and kneeling upon
the ground beside Emma, wiped her pale face, and tucking up her
sleeves, chafed her poor withered arms, until Emma revived.

"Thank you," said she; "I was a little faint. Mamma is so desirous for
me to exercise in the open air, that I go every day to the farthest
limit of my strength. I was not able to climb that hill this morning."

Susan made no reply, but sat looking mournfully into her face. All the
morning she had been weeping over the sorrows of an imaginary being
whom she had found in a novel wandering about, and falling at every
step into the most superlative misery. It was hard for Susan to read,