I knelt down by the bed.  In a few moments my eyes became used to the darkness, and I saw Annie’s face lying motionless on the farther edge of the bed, turned to the wall.  It was perfectly white except the lips, which were almost black, and were swollen and crusted over with the fearful fever.  Her beautiful hair fell in tangled masses, and half covered her face.

“She seems to be lying very uncomfortably,” said Aunt Ann, “but the doctor ordered that she should not be disturbed in any way.”

I looked at my aunt’s face and listened to her voice in bewilderment.  The whole world had for years called her, and with apparent justice, “a hard and unsympathizing woman.”  No human being had ever seen a really free unconstrained smile on her face, or heard from her lips an impulsive word.  When it was known that the genial, rollicking, open-hearted Henry Ware was to marry her, everybody shuddered.  As years went on, everybody who sat by Henry Ware’s fireside, and was kindled and made welcome by his undiminished and unconquerable cheeriness, felt at the same time chilled and paralyzed by the courteous, unexceptionable dignity of Mrs. Ware.  Even I, having the freedom of a daughter in their house, and loving my uncle hardly less than I loved my father, had never once supposed that anybody could love Aunt Ann, or that she would permit it.  I always felt a little terror when I saw Annie kiss her, or my uncle put his arm around her.  My own loving, caressing, over-flowing mother had given me by inheritance, and had taught me by example, a type of love which knew no life without expression.  And very well I knew that that sweet mother of mine, whom the whole town loved, and who herself loved the whole world, seemed always turned into stone by the simple presence of Aunt Ann.

And now Aunt Ann was sitting on the floor by my side, clinging to my hand, resting my head on her bosom, and, as I felt instantly and instinctively, revealing in her every tone, look, word, such intensity and passionateness of feeling as I had never in my whole life seen before.  I saw then that she had always held me side by side with her own child in her heart, and that she knew the rare quality of the love I had for Annie.

“I ought not to have let you come here,” she said, more as if speaking to herself than to me; “they, too, have but one.”

“But, Aunt Ann, you could not have kept me out,” I whispered.

“Yes, I knew that, my child,” she replied; “but no one else would know it.”

From that moment there was between my Aunt Ann and me a subtle bond which partook of all the holiest mysteries of love.  There were both motherhood and the love of lovers in my love for Annie.  Annie’s mother felt them, and was willing to have her own motherhood added to and ministered to by them.  From that moment I believe not even her husband seemed so near to her in her relation with her child as I.