"But how can she, if they are not all equally deserving? I was so different to Edward: he was so handsome and good, and so animated and happy; and I was always fretful and ill, and they said so often naughty; and he used to fondle poor mamma, and show his love, which I was afraid to do, though I did love her so very much (the tears started to her eyes), so I could not help feeling he must be much better than I was, just as I always feel all my cousins are, and so it was no wonder poor mamma loved him so much the best."
"Have I ever made any difference between Edward and you, Ellen?" asked Mrs. Hamilton, conquering, with no small effort, the emotion called forth by Ellen's simple words.
"Oh, no, no!" and she clung to her in almost painful emotion. "But you are so good, so kind to every body; you would love me, and be kind to me as poor papa was, because nobody else could.
"My dear Ellen, what can I do to remove these mistaken impressions? I love you, and your father loved you, because you have qualities claiming our love quite as powerfully as your brother. You must not imagine because you may be less personally and mentally favored, that you are inferior to him, either in the sight of your Heavenly Father, or of the friends and guardians He has given you. And even if such were the case, and you were as undeserving as you so wrongly imagine yourself, my duty, as that of your mother, would be just the same. A parent does not love and guide her children according to their individual merits, my dear Ellen, but according to the fountain of love which, to enable her to do her duty, God has so mercifully placed in her heart; and therefore those who have the least attractions and the most faults, demand the greater cherishing to supply the place of the one, and more careful guiding to overcome the other. Do you quite understand me, love."
Ellen's earnest face, on which joy and hope seemed struggling with doubt, was sufficient answer.
"All mothers do not think of their solemn responsibility in the same light; and many causes—sad recollections and self-reproaches for her early life, and separation in coldness from her father and myself, might all have tended to weaken your mother's consciousness of her duty, and so, without any fault in yourself, my Ellen, have occasioned her too great partiality for Edward. But do you remember her last words?"
Ellen did remember them, and acknowledged they had so increased her affection for her mother, as to render the promise still more sacred to her.
"I feared so, dearest; but it is just the contrary effect which they should have had. When she called you to her, and blessed and kissed you as fondly as she did Edward, she said she had done you injustice, had failed in her duty to you, and it so grieved her, for it was too late to atone for it then; she could only pray to God to raise you up a kinder parent. I have tried to be that, for her sake, as well as your own; and will you not acknowledge, that if she had been spared to love and know your affection for her, she could no more have borne to see you suffer as you have done for Edward, than I could my Emmeline for Percy? Do you not think, when she had learned to feel as I do, which she had already begun to do, that she would have recalled that fatal promise, and entreated you not to act upon it? What has it ever done but to make you to painfully suffer, lead you often into error, and confirm, by concealment, Edward's faults?"
Ellen's tears were falling fast and freely, but they were hardly tears of pain. Her aunt's words seemed to disperse a thick mist from her brain and heart, and for the first time, to satisfy her that she might dismiss the painful memory of her promise, and dismiss it without blame or disobedience to her mother.
Mrs. Hamilton had begun the conversation in trembling, for it seemed so difficult to accomplish her object without undue condemnation of her sister; but as Ellen, clasping her arms about her neck, tried to thank her again and again, for taking such a heavy load from her heart, saying that she would still help Edward just the same, and she would try to guard him and herself from doing wrong, that her mother should love her still, she felt she had succeeded, and silently, but how fervently, thanked God.