she had been to the dream;
and while she lost both health and spirits in the contemplation of Arthur
Waring's fitful and heedless manner toward her, and was evidently pained
by the discovery of his selfish and politic traits,--to call them by no
harsher name,--it was inexpressibly touching to hear the excuses she made
for him, to see the all-shielding love with which she veiled his faults,
and kept him as a mother would keep her graceless, yet dearest child from
animadversion and reproach.

In the mean time I heard often from Letty,--no good news of her husband,
but that her child grew more and more a comfort, that her friends were
very kind, and always in a tiny postscript some such phrase as this: "I
try to be patient, Sarah," or "I don't scold Harry so much as I did,
dear." I hoped for Letty, for she persevered.

That summer we saw less than ever of Mr. Waring; he was very busy at the
mill in order that it might be far enough advanced to resist the
inevitable spring freshets; and besides, we were absent from the Valley
some weeks, endeavoring to recruit Jo's failing health at the sea-side.
But this was a vain endeavor; that which sapped the springs of her life
was past outward cure. She inherited her father's delicate and unreliable
constitution, and a nervous organization, whose worst disease is ever the
preying of doubt, anxiety, or regret. As winter drew on, she grew no
better; a dim, dreamy abstraction brooded over her. She said to me often,
with a vague alarm, "Sally, how far off you seem! Do come nearer!" She
ceased to talk when we were alone, her step grew languid, her eye deeper,
--and its bright expression, when you roused her, was longer in shooting
back into the clouded sphere than ever before. She sat for hours by the
window, her lovely head resting on its casement, looking out, always out
and away, beyond the hills, into the deep spaces of blue air, past cloud
and vapor, to the stars. Sudden noises startled her to an extreme degree;
a quick step flushed her cheek with fire and fluttered her breath. How I
longed for spring! I hoped all from the delicate ministrations of Nature;
though the physician we called gave me no hope of her final recovery. Mr.
Waring himself seemed struck with her aspect, and many little signs of
friendly interest came from him. As often as he could, he returned to his
old haunts; and while the pleasure of his presence and the excitement of
his undisguised anxiety wrought on her,