"No," said Aveline with a faint smile "no, I do not feel much better yet. I think I must wait until the weather is warmer."
And she drew her shawl closer round her.
"Mother will be sorry for that," said the little girl sadly; "mother said she did not look to see you ever better in this world."
"And mother cried when she said so," added the boy fixing his round blue eyes on Aveline.
Aveline made no answer, when the children had done speaking, and they stood by her side, constrained and silent for some minutes.
At last she looked up, and said quietly. "Well now, you can go on playing. Jane will be very careful of her two brothers. It is quite like a woman to be trusted—is it not Jane?"
The children stole gently away hand in hand; and Aveline, after a pause, during which she struggled in vain to calm her feelings, burst into a passion of tears and convulsive sobs. Her mother had so carefully concealed from her all suspicions of her danger; so scrupulously hidden her fears of the result of her illness; that Aveline always looked forward to the warm weather as the infallible cure for her cough, and ascribed to accidental causes the different symptoms which revealed too well to others the nature of her complaint. To die. The thought was so new—so terrible. To leave the world—she was so full of genius, of intellectual life, she had done so much, she had so much to do, (the feeling of all those who have done much), and to leave her mother—who had no one—no single thing in life to supply her place. Could it be? Could nothing really save her? Was her fate so plainly indicated, that the poor peasant woman, whom she visited and relieved, could not fail to read it? Her agitation shook her from head to foot. And yet another thought would intrude itself; a memory and a hope that she had banished, yet clung to in spite of reason, for very long. "If I die," she exclaimed, clasping her hands in agony, "I shall never see him again!"
After a while she collected herself; she would not distress her mother by appearing conscious of her perilous state. And her mother was suppressing all that she feared and felt, from the same kind but mistaken motive; for both would have been relieved and strengthened had they opened their hearts, and wept together instead of in secret.
"Well, Aveline, are you tired," asked Mrs. Fitzpatrick, as she returned to her daughter.
"Rather tired, mamma, of sitting," said Aveline in that unequal voice that betrays recent tears; "if you will give me your arm, I will walk a little way along the beach."