Ellen's eye fell upon the gossamer robe.—she threw it upon the floor, and trampled it "I hate it! and myself, and everything else! I am a hypocrite! a lying hypocrite! with my hollow smiles and broken heart. Leave me! go! or I shall hate you!"
Ida left her thus—writhing under the scorpion-lash of remorse, and rejecting consolation. She met Josephine, a square or two from home, and upon the door-step, Mr. Lacy. Admitting him, she ran up stairs to efface the marks of her recent agitation. Her pallor and swollen eyes remained, however, and did not escape him. He did not begin, as many would have done, in his place, to speak of topics entirely foreign to what was in their thoughts; he wished to apply a curative, not an anodyne.
"Charley tells me you are going to the country, before long;" he said. "I do not regret it, as I should if I were to stay here myself. After the first of April, I shall study at home, until autumn. You are to pay your friend Carry a visit, are you not?"
"Yes."
"She is the 'sister' I have heard so much of?"
"The same—I wish you knew her."
"I think I do. Her cheerful society is what you need. While it is neither possible, nor desirable to forget that we have been bereaved, we should beware how we indulge in a luxury of woe. Our duty to those we have lost, does not oblige us to neglect the friends who are spared to us."
"Very few remain to me," said Ida, tremulously.
"You are wrong. You may never find one who will fill his place; but the rest love you the more, that you are afflicted. Charley is a true brother."