A smile, faint but beautiful, passed over her features, and left its sweetness on her face.

From that hour to the death-hour Mrs.Linwood did minister to her, as a loving sister would have done.

Edith often accompanied her mother and tried to comfort me, but I was then inaccessible to comfort, as I was deaf to hope.

When she stayed away, I missed the soft floating of her airy figure, the pitying glance of her heavenly blue eye; but when she came, I said to myself, "_Her_ mother is not dying.

How can she sympathize with me?
She is the favorite of Him who is crushing me beneath the iron hand of His wrath." Thus impious were my thoughts, but no one read them on my pale, drooping brow.