go," nodding to me, over
the book, and Temperance also made energetic signs to me to go, and
not bother the poor girl.

Always regarding her from the point of view she presented, I felt
little love for her; her peculiarities offended me as they did mother.
We did not perceive the process, but Verry was educated by sickness;
her mind fed and grew on pain, and at last mastered it. The darkness
in her nature broke; by slow degrees she gained health, though never
much strength. Upon each recovery a change was visible; a spiritual
dawn had risen in her soul; moral activity blending with her ideality
made her life beautiful, even in the humblest sense. Veronica! you
were endowed with genius; but while its rays penetrated you, we did
not see them. How could we profit by what you saw and heard, when we
were blind and deaf? To us, the voices of the deep sang no epic of
grief; the speech of the woods was not articulate; the sea-gull's
flashing flight, and the dark swallow's circling sweep, were facts
only. Sunrise and sunset were not a paean to day and night, but five
o'clock A.M. or P.M. The seasons that came and went were changes
from hot to cold; to you, they were the moods of nature, which found
response in those of your own life and soul; her storms and calms were
pulses which bore a similitude to the emotions of your heart!

Veronica's habits of isolation clung to her; she would never leave
home. The teaching she had was obtained in Surrey. But her knowledge
was greater than mine. When I went to Rosville she was reading
"Paradise Lost," and writing her opinions upon it in a large blank
book. She was also devising a plan for raising trees and flowers
in the garret, so that she might realize a picture of a tropical
wilderness. Her tastes were so contradictory that time never hung
heavy with her; though she had as little practical talent as any
person I ever knew, she was a help to both sick and well. She
remembered people's ill turns, and what was done for them; and for the
well she remembered dates and suggested agreeable occupations--gave
them happy ideas. Besides being a calendar of domestic traditions, she
was weather-wise, and prognosticated gales, meteors, high tides, and
rains.

Home, father said, was her sphere. All that she required, he thought
he could do; but of me he was doubtful. Where did I belong? he asked.

I was still "possessed," Aunt Merce said, and mother called me
"lawless." "What upon earth are you