Sybil took her hand, and still all the more gently for the increasing agitation of Rosa, she continued:
“We are daughters of the Divine Father, sisters in one suffering humanity, and so we should care for each other. At present you are suffering, and I have some power to comfort you. In the future our positions may be reversed, and I may be the sufferer and you the comforter. Who can tell?”
“O, dear lady, Heaven forbid that great heart of yours should ever be called to suffer, or that you should ever need such poor help as mine. But this I know: so penetrated am I by your goodness, that, if ever you should lose your present happiness and my death would restore it, I would die to give it back to you,” fervently exclaimed the stranger.
And for the moment she felt as she had spoken, for she was most profoundly moved by a magnanimity she had never seen equalled.
Sybil blushed like a child, and found nothing to say in reply to this excessive praise. She only left her hand in the clasp of the stranger, who covered it with kisses, and then continued:
“When I first saw your little white card and the delicate tracery of your name and your kind words, I seemed to know it was a friend’s writing. And when I first saw your sweet face and heard your tender tones, both so full of heavenly pity, I felt that the good Lord had not forsaken me, for He had sent one of his holy angels to visit me. Ah, lady, if you had only come and looked at me so and spoken to me so, and then passed out and away forever, still, still, that look and that tone would have remained with me, a comfort and a blessing for all time. But now—but now to hold out your hands to lead me to a place in your own home, by your own side—oh, it is too much! too much!”
And tears of many mingled emotions flowed down the speaker’s cheeks.
“There, there!” said Sybil, utterly confused by this excessive, but most sincere adulation, yet still caressing the stranger’s fair head, “there, dear, dry your eyes, and tell me if you can be ready to leave this place with us to-morrow morning.”
Again the foreign lady seized and kissed the hands of her new friend, exclaiming fervently:
“Yes dear lady, yes! I am too deeply touched by your heavenly goodness not to be anxious to profit by it as soon as possible.”