So bright and playful was the dear girl over all her old familiar
interests that we inexperienced beings believed not only that the
wound to her affections was healed, but that she either did not know
or did not realise the sentence that had been pronounced on her; but
when this was repeated to her mother, it was met by a sad smile and
the reply that we only saw her in her best hours. Still, through
the summer, it was impossible to us to accept the truth; she looked
so lovely, was so cheerful, and took such delight in all that was
about her.
With the first cold, however, she seemed to shrivel up, and the bad
nights extended into the days. Emily ascribed the change to the
lack of going out into the air, and always found reasons for the
increased languor and weakness; till at last there came a day when
my poor little sister seemed as if the truth had broken upon her for
the first time, when Ellen talked plainly to her of their parting,
and had asked us both, 'her dear brother and sister,' to be with her
at her Communion on All Saints' Day.
She had written a little letter to Clarence, begging his forgiveness
for having cut him, and treated him with the scorn which, I believe,
was the chief fault that weighed upon her conscience; and, hearing
my father's voice in the house, she sent a message to beg him to
come and see her in her mother's dressing-room--that very window
where I had first heard her voice, refusing to come down to 'those
Winslows.
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