"When I married you, Grantley, your sister became mine—I could not be more anxious for her, more willing to guard and cherish her, if she had been a legacy from my own dead mother, than I am now."
"I am certain of that, and I love and honor you for it. But in your place I should perhaps be annoyed even to have a sister share affection with me."
"It is not like your love for me?"
"No, no; no love could be like that! But Elsie is such a child, such a happy, innocent creature, and I never look at her without remembering my dying mother's last words. If any harm came to her, Bessie, I think I could not even venture to meet that lost mother in heaven."
"No harm will come to her, Grantley—none shall!"
"I think she is one of those creatures born to be happy; I trust she may never have a great trial in all her life. I don't believe she could endure it; she would fade like a flower."
"It is impossible to tell how any one would receive suffering," Elizabeth replied; "sometimes those very fragile natures are best able to bear up, and find an elasticity which prevents sorrow taking deep root."
"It may be so; but I could not bear to have any pain come near her—It would strike my own heart."
"Could any one be more light-hearted and careless than she is?"
"Oh, she is happy as a bird—only let us keep her so."