Oh, dear me! if anything of that sort had happened in our house it would almost have broken my heart.
Harry would have had to go; and all the time he was away I should have been picturing that poor lady——
But I won’t write any more about it. It makes me feel so unhappy. Oh dear, oh dear! what terrible sorrows there are in the world! When one thinks of them, and contrasts one’s own happy lot with them, how thankful one ought to be! Fancy, if my Harry were ever away, and—— No! no! no! I will not think of such things. I’m a little low to-day and out of sorts, and when I am like that I get the most melancholy ideas, and find myself crying before I know what I’m doing.
Harry says I want a change; that I’ve been working too hard, and been too anxious—and that’s quite true, for our business has got almost beyond us, and the trouble of servants and one thing and another has upset me.
But I must get this Memoir done while I have a few minutes to spare. I call them Memoirs from the old habit; but, of course, they are hardly that, though I suppose an hotel could have memoirs.
It was about the young lady who was taken so seriously ill in our house, and that we were afraid was going to die.
She came down with her mamma early in the spring, having been recommended for change of air; but not wanting to be too far away, because she was under a great London doctor—a specialist I think he was called—and she had to go up and see him once a week.
Her mamma was about fifty—a very grave, I might say “hard,” lady. I didn’t like her much when she first came; there was something about her that seemed to keep you at your distance—“stand-offish” Harry called it—and she never unbent an atom, no matter how civil you tried to be.
But the daughter, who was about two-and-twenty, was the sweetest young lady, so pale and delicate-looking; but with a sweet, sad smile that Harry said was heavenly. And certainly it was, though I couldn’t say myself what is the difference between a heavenly smile and an earthly one: but there must be, or people wouldn’t use the word.
Miss Elmore—that was the young lady’s name—always had a kind word for me when I went into her room; but she talked very little, only thanking me for any little attention I showed her, and saying she was afraid she was giving a great deal of trouble.