“True, my sister—­too true, too true,” said Maria, bursting into an agony of bitter sorrow; “what strange mystery is in the gentle one’s affliction?  Surely, if there was ever a spotless or a sinless creature on earth, she was and is that creature.”

“Beware of murmuring, Maria,” said her father; “the purpose, though at present concealed, may yet become sufficiently apparent for us to recognize in it the benignant dispensation of a merciful God.  Our duty, my dear child, is now to bear, and be resigned.  The issues of this sad calamity are with the Almighty, and with Him let us patiently leave them.”

“Had I never disclosed my love,” proceeded Jane, “I might have stolen quietly away from them all and laid my cheek on that hardest pillow which giveth the soundest sleep; but would not concealment,” she added, starting; “would not that too have been dissimulation?  Oh God help me!—­it is, it is clear that in any event I was foredoomed!”

Agnes, who had watched her sister with an interest too profound to suffer even the grief necessary on such an occasion to take place, now went over, and taking her hand in one of hers, placed the fingers of the other upon her sister’s cheek, thus attempting to fix Jane’s eyes upon her own countenance—­

“Do you not know who it is,” said she, “that is now speaking to you?—­Look upon me, and tell me do you forget me so soon?”

“Who can tell yet,” she proceeded, “who can tell yet—­time may retrieve all, and he may return:  but the yew tree—­I fear—­I fear—­why, it is an emblem of death; and perhaps death may unite us—­yes, and I say he will—­he will—­he will.  Does he not feel pity?  Oh yes, in a thousand, thousand cases he is the friend of the miserable.  Death the Consoler!  Oh from how many an aching brow does he take away the pain for ever?  How many sorrows does he soothe into rest that is never broken!—­from how many hearts like mine, does he pluck the arrows that fester in them, and bids them feel pain no more!  In his house, that house appointed for all living—­what calmness and peace is there?  How sweet and tranquil is the bed which he smoothes down for the unhappy; there the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.  Then give me Death the Consoler?—­Death the Consoler!”

A sense of relief and wild exultation beamed from her countenance, on uttering the last words, and she rose up and walked about the room wringing her hands, yet smiling at the idea of being relieved by Death the Consoler!  It is not indeed unusual to witness in deranged persons, an unconscious impression of pain and misery, accompanied at the same time by a vague sense of unreal happiness—­that is, a happiness which, whilst it balances the latent conviction of their misery does not, however, ultimately remove it.  This probably constitutes that pleasure in madness, which, it is said, none but mad persons know.

At length she stood, and, for a long time seemed musing upon various and apparently contrasted topics, for she sometimes smiled as a girl at play, and sometimes relapsed into darkness of mood and pain, and incoherency.  But after passing through these rapid changes for many minutes, she suddenly exclaimed in a low but earnest voice, “Where is he?”