Bah! They are nearly all married or engaged; their lives have drifted completely away from mine, as it was natural and inevitable that they should.

We are good friends still, but what does it amount to?
I rarely think of them; they never of me, I imagine.

We exert no influence on each other's lives, and add nothing to them.

I never had a sister, but I had learned to love you as if you were one, and when I heard that you were to be of our family again, the resumption of our old relations was one of my dearest expectations.

It hurt me cruelly, Madge, when you laughed at the idea as preposterous, and told me that I had forgotten myself when following the most natural impulse of my heart.