THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.
To the charming freshness of the sisters' faces had succeeded a livid pallor. Their large blue eyes, now hollow and sunk in, appeared of enormous dimensions. Their lips, once so rosy, were now suffused with a violet hue, and a similar color was gradually displacing the transparent carmine of their cheeks and fingers. It was as if all the roses in their charming countenances were fading and turning blue before the icy blast of death.
When the orphans met, tottering and hardly able to sustain themselves, a cry of mutual horror burst from their lips. Each of them exclaimed, at sight of the fearful change in her sister's features. "Are you also ill, sister?" And then, bursting into tears, they threw themselves into each other's arms, and looked anxiously at one another.
"Good heaven, Rose! how pale you are!"
"Like you, sister."
"And do you feel a cold shudder?"
"Yes, and my sight fails me."
"My bosom is all on fire."
"Sister, we are perhaps going to die."
"Let it only be together!"