But if one has occupied a large share of your thoughts, solicitudes, and affections, and there comes a time when the very last you can ever do for them, living or dead, is done, then for the first time you begin to take the full measure of your loss.

Albert felt now that he was picking up the broken threads of another man's life.
Between the past, which had been full of anxieties and plans for little Kate, and the future, into which no little Kate could ever come, there was a great chasm.

There is nothing that love parts from so regretfully as its burdens.
Mrs.Ferret came to see Charlton, and smiled her old sudden puckered smile, and talked in her jerky complacent voice about the uses of sanctified affliction, and her trust that the sudden death of his sister in all the thoughtless vanity of youth would prove a solemn and impressive warning to him to repent in health before it should be with him everlastingly too late.

Albert was very far from having that childlike spirit which enters the kingdom of heaven easily.

Some natures, are softened by affliction, but they are not such as his.
Charlton in his aggressiveness demanded to know the reason for everything.