"After all, this is more unpleasant than I thought for." The slight stairs shook under his hasty tread.

He opened the door of No.
2, and that Catherine, whom he had last seen at her age of gay sixteen, radiant with bloom, and, but for her air of pride, the model for a Hebe,--that Catherine, old ere youth was gone, pale, faded, the dark hair silvered over, the cheeks hollow, and the eye dim,--that Catherine fell upon his breast! "God bless you, brother! How kind to come! How long since we have met!" "Sit down, Catherine, my dear sister.

You are faint--you are very much changed--very.

I should not have known you." "Brother, I have brought my boy; it is painful to part from him--very--very painful: but it is right, and God's will be done." She turned, as she spoke, towards a little, deformed rickety dwarf of a sofa, that seemed to hide itself in the darkest corner of the low, gloomy room; and Morton followed her.

With one hand she removed the shawl that she had thrown over the child, and placing the forefinger of the other upon her lips-lips that smiled then--she whispered,--"We will not wake him, he is so tired.