This quality has its great advantages certainly, but it has its extreme dangers.
Helen had no brothers or sisters or special friends. She had loved only her father and mother, but she had loved them with an almost excessive devotion.
When her father died she had borne up bravely, that she might comfort and help her mother, and now she was bearing up still, that she might not sadden that parting soul with the anguish of her own.
As she lay there in her mother’s arms, her eyes were wide open and tearless, but they were full of a desperate gloom sadder than tears. She was almost as pale herself as was her mother.
“Darling,” the mother said tenderly, “how can I bear to leave you all alone? Promise me one thing only, to open your heart to new love. It would be so like you to shut yourself up in your grief, and to fancy you were loving me less if you let yourself care for your Aunt Helen.
“She will love you for my sake, and she must be your second mother now. We were dearer than most sisters to each other, and she is a wise and good woman.
“Her daughter, my namesake Laura, is just about your own age, and being her mother’s daughter, she must be worth loving. Try to care for them, my darling. The life which has no love in it is empty indeed. Will you try?”
“O mamma,” the girl cried, with a sudden, desperate sob, “I will try because you bid me! I will try; but oh, how can I love them? How can I bear to see another girl happy with her mother, and to know that you will never be with me any more—never in all the world? If I call all day and all night, you will never hear nor answer! O my own mother, must you leave me?”