“Well, we will not do it any more, love, if it pains or is disagreeable to you.”
“It confounds me, Agnes, it injures my head, and sometimes makes me scarcely know where I am, or who are about me. I begin to think that there’s some dreadful secret among you; and I think of coffins, and deaths, or of marriages, and wedding favors, and all that. Now, I can’t bear to think of marriages, but death has something consoling in it; give me death the consoler: yet,” she added, musing, “we shall not die, but we shall all be changed.”
“Jane, love, may I ask you why you are dressing with such care?”
“When we go down stairs I shall tell you. It’s wonderful, wonderful!”
“What is, dear?”
“My fortitude. But those words were prophetic. I remember well what I felt when I heard them; to be sure he placed them in a different light from what I at first understood them in; but I am handsomer now, I think. You will be a witness for me below, Agnes, will you not?”
“To be sure, darling.”
“Agnes, where are my tears gone of late? I think I ought to advertise for them, or advertise for others, ‘Wanted for unhappy Jane Sinclair’”—
Agnes could bear no more. “Jane,” she exclaimed, clasping her in her arms, and kissing her smiling lips, for she smiled while uttering the last words, “oh, Jane, don’t, don’t, my darling, or you will break my heart—your own Agnes’s heart, whom you loved so well, and whose happiness or misery is bound I up in yours.”
“For unhappy Jane Sinclair!—no I won’t distress you, dear Agnes; let the advertisement go; here, I will kiss you, love, and dry your tears, and then when I am dressed you shall know all.”