the dear girl closely on the subject of my sister’s malady; even desiring to know if her affections were any way connected with this extraordinary sinking of the vital powers; but not in the slightest degree inclining to the distrust of Rupert’s being in any manner implicated in the affair.  Lucy, truthful and frank as she was, felt the uselessness, nay, the danger, of enlightening her father, and managed to evade all his more delicate inquiries, without involving herself in falsehoods.  She well knew, if he were apprised of the real state of the case, that Rupert would have been sent for; and every reparation it was in his power to make would have been insisted on, as an act of justice; a hopeless and distressing attempt to restore the confidence of unbounded love, and the esteem which, once lost, is gone forever.  Perhaps the keenest of all Grace’s sufferings proceeded from the consciousness of the total want of merit in the man she had so effectually enshrined in her heart, that he could only be ejected by breaking in pieces and utterly destroying the tenement that had so long contained him.  With ordinary notions, this change of opinion might have sufficed for the purposes of an effectual cure; but my poor sister was differently constituted.  She had ever been different from most of her sex, in intensity of feeling; and had come near dying, while still a child, on the occasion of the direful catastrophe of my father’s loss; and the decease of even our mother, though long expected, had come near to extinguish the flame of life in the daughter.  As I have already said more than once, a being so sensitive and so pure, ever seemed better fitted for the regions of bliss, than for the collisions and sorrows of the world.

Now we were at Clawbonny again, I scarce knew how to employ myself.  Grace I could not see; Lucy, who took the entire management of the invalid, requiring for her rest and quiet.  In this she did but follow the directions of reason, as well as those left by Post; and I was fain to yield, knowing that my sister could not possibly have a more judicious or a more tender nurse.

The different persons belonging to the mill and the farm came to me for directions, which I was compelled to give with thoughts engrossed with the state of my sister.  More than once I endeavoured to arouse myself; and, for a few minutes, seemed to enter, if I did not truly enter, with interest into the affairs presented to my consideration; but these little rallies were merely so many attempts at self-delusion, and I finally referred everything to the respective persons entrusted with the different branches of the duty bidding them act as they had been accustomed to do in my absence.

“Why, yes, Masser Mile,” answered the old negro who was the head man in the field, “dis berry well, if he can do it.  Remember I alway hab Masser Hardinge to talk to me about ’e crop, and sich t’ing, and dat a won’erful help to a poor nigger when he in a nonplush.”