"Hush, Betsy," was the murmured reply, in her cousin's well known voice; "those thoughts will only make it harder to bear."
Betsy was not so easily stopped, but Mabel seemed to reply no more.
Every word went to Lucy's heart. The frequent question of despairing feeling. "What shall I do?" received no answer, and she sat on in her desolate seat, or varied her watch by stealing on tiptoe to the end of the passage. Thus the weary time slipt away, and she had listened to the church clock, as it struck the hours till midnight—she then heard the sound of horses' feet, and anxious for any change, she ran down stairs—but she found that Clair and the surgeon had already been admitted by Mr. Ware, who was watching for them, and, feeling herself of no use, she again crept to her room to listen, trembling for the doctor's opinion. The examination lasted a long time, and she became nearly worn out with waiting, and trying every minute to divine something from the hurried voices, or hurried steps of the attendants in the sick room. But she could learn nothing, till she heard the doctor leave the room, and lead Mabel to that next her own, and then she heard her say in a tremulous voice.
"What do you think of her, Mr. Williams?"
"The accident has been a severe one," he returned.
"Can she recover?" was asked, in a tone which Lucy trembled to hear, and she leant forward to catch the answer.
"A complete cure is beyond hope, my dear Miss Lesly; I entreat you to bear up against this blow," were the words she caught; "my heart bleeds for you, but I see the back is broken, and you know—" a groan of anguish, which she would have fled miles to have escaped hearing, was the only answer sentence thus given.
Then followed confused words, as if he were trying to comfort, broken by suppressed sobs.
An agony of terror, alike for Amy and her sister, then seized her—she trembled in every limb; and when she attempted to cry out, her tongue seemed to refuse to utter a sound. She sank upon the floor, too overpowered to move, and yet without the relief of fainting. Her thoughts became more and more distinct—of Amy, growing, perhaps, in beauty and womanhood, stretched on the bed of helpless sickness, unable to find advantages in either. What a blight had she cast upon a home she had found so happy. And Mabel, too, the beautiful unselfish Mabel, no longer the playfellow of innocent childhood, but the hopeless nurse of youthful decrepitude.