‘Dear child, your Ich would be set aside by living to others, who only seek to make you happier.’
‘I wish they would let me alone. If they had, there would have been an end of it.’
‘An end—no indeed, my poor child!’
‘There!’ cried Bertha; ‘that’s what it is to live! To be shuddered at!’
‘No, Bertha, I did not shudder at the wild delusion and indiscretion, which may be lived down and redeemed, but at the fearful act that would have cut you off from all hope, and chained you to yourself, and such a self, for ever, never to part from the shame whence you sought to escape. Yes, surely there must have been pleading in Heaven to win for you that instant’s relenting. Rescued twice over, there must be some work for you to do, something to cast into shade all that has passed.’
‘It will not destroy memory!’ she said, with hopeless indifference.
‘No; but you may be so occupied with it as to rise above your present pain and humiliation, and remember them only to gather new force from your thankfulness.’
‘What, that I was made a fool of?’ cried Bertha, with sharpness in her thin voice.
‘That you were brought back to the new life that is before you.’
Though Bertha made no answer, Honor trusted that a beginning had been made, but only to be disappointed, for the fever was higher the next day, and Bertha was too much oppressed for speech. The only good sign was that in the dusk she desired that the door should be left open, in case Maria should be singing. It was the first preference she had evinced. The brothers were ready to crown Maria, and she sang with