She made no reply. They had been out walking, and they now reached Miss Mills’s door. “Are you ill?” Carl asked, noticing that she looked unusually pale.
“I am rather tired,” she answered faintly. “Good-by!”
When he turned away, she stood looking at him through the side-light, and, when he was no longer visible, she went up-stairs to her chamber. She was very tired, and very ill. Her impulse was to lie down, but she
hesitated, then refrained. “All is ready,” she said, looking about her. “I do not think that there is anything to do.”
She put up a small trunkful of clothing with feverish haste, rang her bell, and ordered a carriage. “Drive to the Hospital of the Sisters of Charity, in South Boston,” she said to the driver. And, sinking back, knew no more till she had reached her destination.
“I think I have come here to die,” she said to the sister who received her. “And I have a few wishes. Send back word immediately where I am. I did not tell them, for I could not bear any struggle. My worldly affairs are all in order, and I have no last words to say to any one. Let no person come near me but the sister and the priest, and do not mention any person’s name to me, nor tell me who comes to inquire. I know they will all be kind; but all my life has been a sacrifice to others, a sympathizing with and loving of others, while my own heart starved, and these last hours must be given to God alone. No earthly being has any claim on them.”
Perhaps in all her life she had never before spoken so bitterly, but her words were true. She had given to the poor, and worked for them, and their gratitude had been but the ‘lively sense of favors to come.’ She had been solicitous for friends, had mourned over their sorrows, and sympathized with them always, and their selfishness had grown upon her unselfishness. So sweet had been the sympathy and love she lavished upon them, they had never stopped to inquire if she were impoverishing herself, or if she also might not wish sometimes to receive as well as to give.
But the thought of how keen would be the revenge of this utter withdrawal
at the time when they must have been startled into thinking of her in some other way than as pensioners, never entered her mind. Besides that momentary and almost unconscious complaint, she had but one thought: God alone had loved her, and she must be alone with him. She could no longer do anything for any person; and since no one belonged to her more than to any other, nor so much as to others, no one had any claim to intrude now.
The sisters were faithful to their charge. Of the many who came with tardy devotion, she heard nothing; of Miss Clinton, sitting in her carriage at the door, with two men waiting to carry her up-stairs in a chair as soon as she should have permission, the attendants did not speak to her; of Carl Yorke, haunting the place, and sitting hour after hour in the parlor, waiting for news, she never knew.