mourn and weep with you;
anything--anything," said the admirable girl, "rather than keep your
heart from ours;" and as she spoke, the tears fell fast down her cheeks.

"Dear Agnes," said Jane, putting her arm about her sister's neck, and
looking up mournfully into her face; "I cannot weep for myself--I cannot
weep even with you; you know I love you--how I love you--oh, how I love
you all; but I cannot tell why it is--society, even the society of them
I love best, disturbs me, and you know not the pleasure--melancholy
I grant it to be, but you know not the pleasure that comes to me from
solitude. To me--to me there is a charm in it ten times more soothing to
my heart than all the power of human consolation."

"But why so melancholy at all, Jane," said Maria, "surely there is no
just cause for it."

She smiled as she replied, "Why am I melancholy, Maria?--why? why should
I not? Do I not read the approaching death of Charles Osborne in the
gloom of every countenance about me? Why do you whisper to each other
that which you will not let me hear? Why is there a secret and anxious,
and a mysterious intercourse between this family and his, of the purport
of which I am kept ignorant--and I alone?"

"But suppose Charles Osborne is not sick," said William; "suppose he was
never in better health than he is at this moment--" he saw his father's
hand raised, and paused, then added, carelessly, "for supposition's sake
I say merely."

"But you must not suppose that, William," she replied, starting, "unless
you wish to blight your sister. On what an alternative then, would
you force a breaking heart. If not sick, if not dying, where is he?
I require him--I demand him. My heart," she proceeded, rising up and
speaking with vehemence--"my heart calls for him--shouts aloud in its
agony--shouts aloud--shouts aloud for him. He is, he is sick; the malady
of his family is upon him; he is ill--he is dying; it must be so; ay,
and it shall be so; I can bear that, I can bear him to die, but never
to become faithless to a heart like mine. But I am foolish," she added,
after a pause, occasioned by exhaustion; "Oh, my dear William, why, by
idle talk, thus tamper with your poor affectionate sister's happiness? I
know you meant no harm, but oh, William, William, do it no more."

"I only put it, dear Jane, I only put it as a mere case,"--the young man
was evidently cut to the heart, and could not for some moments speak.

She saw his distress, and