The pain, the regret, with which she noted her father's decay were
little indeed compared with the sharp agony which rent her heart as she
perceived the alteration in this dear friend, the blighting of this fair
young flower.
That the withered leaves of autumn should fall is sad, but natural, and
we submit to the gloomy inevitable fact of decay and death. But to see
our rose of roses, the pride and glory of the garden, fade and perish in
its midsummer prime, is a calamity inexplicable and mysterious. Diana
watched her father's decline with a sense of natural sorrow and pity; but
there was neither surprise nor horror in the thought that for him the end
of all things was drawing nigh. How different was it with Charlotte--with
that happy soul for whom life and love wore their brightest smile, before
whose light joyous footsteps stretched so fair a pathway!
The illness, whatever it was--and neither Mr. Sheldon nor the portly and
venerable physician whom he called in could find a name for it--crept
upon the patient with stealthy and insidious steps. Dizziness, trembling,
faintness; trembling, faintness, dizziness; the symptoms alternated day
by day. Sometimes there was a respite of a few days; and Charlotte--the
youthful, the sanguine, the happy--declared that her enemy had left her.
"I am sure mamma is right, Di," she said on these occasions. "My nerves
are the beginning and end of the mischief; and if I could get the better
of my nerves, I should be as well as ever.
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