That pressure, if it has been constant, has been enough to half kill her.

Chut, chut! faint indeed--I wonder she has not taken fits or gone into a decline before this." Then a cloud of trouble came over Esther's beautiful face--she had failed again in her duty.

Her husband was regarding her almost gloomily from the sofa, where the little figure lay in its crumpled muslin dress, and her heart told her these children were not receiving a mother's care at her hands.
Afterwards, when Meg was safely in bed and the excitement all over, she went up to her husband almost timidly.
"I'm only twenty; Jack; don't be too hard on me!" she said with a little sob in her voice.

"I can't be all to them that she was, can I ?" He kissed the bright, beautiful head against his shoulder, and comforted her with a tender word or two.

But again and again that night there came to him Meg's white, still face as it lay on the scarlet cushions, and he knew the wind that stirred the curtains at the window had been playing with the long grass in the churchyard a few minutes since..