by pa,” or anybody else.
“I am sure you do not, my dear,” returned her mother, “for you have a fine brave spirit. And your sister Cecilia has a fine brave spirit of another kind, a spirit of pure devotion, a beau-ti-ful spirit! The self-sacrifice of Cecilia reveals a pure and womanly character, very seldom equalled, never surpassed. I have now in my pocket a letter from your sister Cecilia, received this morning—received three months after her marriage, poor child!—in which she tells me that her husband must unexpectedly shelter under their roof his reduced aunt. ‘But I will be true to him, mamma,’ she touchingly writes, ‘I will not leave him, I must not forget that he is my husband. Let his aunt come!’ If this is not pathetic, if this is not woman’s devotion—!” The good lady waved her gloves in a sense of the impossibility of saying more, and tied the pocket-handkerchief over her head in a tighter knot under her chin.