ying
health and strength, because she was completely absorbed in studying out
two or three new forms of disease to which she believed she herself was
a victim. It was the first principle of Marie's belief that nobody ever
was or could be so great a sufferer as _herself_; and, therefore, she
always repelled quite indignantly any suggestion that any one around her
could be sick. She was always sure, in such a case, that it was nothing
but laziness, or want of energy; and that, if they had had the suffering
_she_ had, they would soon know the difference.

Miss Ophelia had several times tried to awaken her maternal fears about
Eva; but to no avail.

"I don't see as anything ails the child," she would say; "she runs
about, and plays."

"But she has a cough."

"Cough! you don't need to tell _me_ about a cough. I've always been
subject to a cough, all my days. When I was of Eva's age, they thought
I was in a consumption. Night after night, Mammy used to sit up with me.
O! Eva's cough is not anything."

"But she gets weak, and is short-breathed."

"Law! I've had that, years and years; it's only a nervous affection."

"But she sweats so, nights!"

"Well, I have, these ten years. Very often, night after night, my
clothes will be wringing wet. There won't be a dry thread in my
night-clothes and the sheets will be so that Mammy has to hang them up
to dry! Eva doesn't sweat anything like that!"

Miss Ophelia shut her mouth for a season. But, now that Eva was fairly
and visibly prostrated, and a doctor called, Marie, all on a sudden,
took a new turn.

"She knew it," she said; "she always felt it, that she was destined
to be the most miserable of mothers. Here she was, with her wretched
health, and her only darling child going down to the grave before her
eyes;"--and Marie routed up Mammy nights, and rumpussed and scolded,
with more energy than ever, all day, on the strength of this new misery.

"My dear Marie, don't talk so!" said St. Clare. "You ought not to give up
the case so, at once."

"You have not a mother's feelings, St. Clare! You never could understand
me!--you don't now."

"But don't talk so, as if it were a gone case!"

"I can't take it as indifferently as you can, St. Clare. If _you_ don't
feel when your only child is in this alarming state, I do. It's a blow
too much for me, with all I was bearing before."

"It's true," said St. Clare, "that Eva is very delicate, _that_ I always
knew; and that she ha