"Do not then turn away from me without consideration, think of your sister—of me—and of yourself, unprotected in a world of strangers, and, if you can, accept the love of
"Your most devoted and respectful
"Arthur Clair."
"The Rectory,
"Friday Evening."
Mabel was troubled, not only by the generous tone of the letter, but because it brought to view, subjects which she had not allowed herself to think upon; for her real strength consisted in a knowledge of her weakness, and she knew that she should be quite incapable of acting, if, to present pain, she added the contemplation of future trials. But now, Clair, in offering her a provision for the future had forced her to think of it. Perhaps generously to save her from the imputation of accepting him, only when pressed by circumstances, as she might be, in but a few weeks.
Now the letter as it lay before her would have her think. She had but a few minutes before left her mother's room with the saddest conviction; and now, crowding on her remembrance came a thousand little speeches, that told her, how earnestly, that dear mother had tried to warn her of her approaching death. Speeches which then appeared but the result of nervous weakness, now occurred to her as truths, which no reasoning could controvert. Some of their little property she knew rested in the hands of an improvident and extravagant aunt, and the remainder of their income would fail altogether when her mother's pension dropped.
And Amy, whose precarious health rendered her now unable to be even moved from room to room, she on whom she had lavished all the comforts which affluence can invent, how could she bear the trials of poverty? How could she suffer the privations to which they would inevitably be reduced; she who could scarcely hear the sound of a heavy footfall without pain, or be moved, without the greatest agony, from the couch on which she constantly lay. Not that she wavered with regard to Clair, but his letter made her uneasy. Poverty, death, and even that place where "all that's wretched paves the way to death," she would have preferred to marriage, if she could but have endured them alone. But who would be her companion? She turned her eyes to the bed where, with cheeks flushed and eyes that scarcely closed, lay the little sufferer, her small, wasted hand tightly compressed as if with pain. At this moment she slightly moved, and Mabel was instantly by her side. Her eyes glistening bright with fever were now opened wide, and gazing anxiously on poor Mabel's tell-tale face.
"Mabel," said she in a low, sweet but peculiar voice, "sit down by me, for I must talk to you to-night, as my pain is all gone."