“Poor Clemmy!” murmured Ernest, with real compassion in his tone.
“You do not pity her, surely, for being unhappy at such trifles?”
“I pity her because such trifles can make her unhappy. Charles, do you know that my conscience is not quite easy about our cousin?”
“Your conscience! You have nothing to do with her folly.”
“We have a good deal to do with one another. I see more of her than of any one but yourself; she is one of my nearest relations; and yet I have never tried in any way to help her on in the right path.”
“I do not believe that she is in it,” replied Charles. “She is constantly trying to play us off against each other; nothing would delight her so much as to make us quarrel, all to gratify her selfish vanity.”
“If she is not in the right path, in which must she be? Where will she find herself if she remains as she is?”
“We cannot help her wanderings; they are no fault of ours.”
“Oh, Charles, we must not act in the spirit of those words, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ We who meet her so often must have some influence for evil or good; and think of the rapture of meeting in heaven with one whom we had been the means of helping to reach it!”
“I can hardly fancy any delight greater,” said Charles; “but I do not know anything that we could do for Clemmy. It is foolish in me, but when I look at her, and watch her affected manner, and hear her trifling talk, I never can realize to myself that she has a soul at all.”