"She made an impatient and half-contemptuous motion of the head as I used the words 'sick ladies;' but she fixed her large, lustrous eyes upon me as I went on speaking—saying nothing, however, when I concluded, but keeping those large dark eyes fixed upon my face.
"'Shall I go?' I said, after a little time thus spent.
"She made a gesture as if to stop me—but without moving those large mournful eyes, in which I could see that tears were slowly gathering.
"Mrs. Penrose had already left the room. I said no more; but took a chair, sat down by the bedside, and laid mine upon her thin, fevered, but most exquisitely-formed hand.
"I gave a gentle, gentle pressure; it was faintly, very faintly returned; and then the tears, which had so slowly gathered into her eyes, fell in a few large drops over her faded cheeks.
"'This is lonely, desolate work, do what we will,' I said, as a sort of answer to these few large tears, falling so quietly and still, and without convulsion of features—the tears of a strong but softened mind. 'To be sick, and without familiar faces—to be sick and among strangers—is a sorrowful, sorrowful thing—but we do our best.'
"'O, you are good—very good,' she said.
"'There is nothing I feel so much myself as this destitution of the heart; solitude in sickness is to me almost more than I can bear; and, therefore, it is, perhaps, that I am almost troublesome in offering my society to those here who have not many friends and visitors—especially to the young. I can bear solitude myself better now, badly as I do bear it, than when I was young. Society seems, to the young, like the vital air upon which they exist.'
"'Yes, perhaps so,' she said, after musing a little—'yes. So long as there was one near me whom I loved, I could get on—better or worse—but I could get on. But she is gone. Others whom I have loved are far—far away. The solitude of the heart! yes, that kills one at last.'
"'Then will you try to make a friend of me? A new friend can never be like an old friend. Yet, when the old wine is drawn down to the dregs, we accept the new, although we still say the old is better.'