Cranford

She was conscious of her sister’s presence, though not, I think, of ours. We stood a little behind the curtain: Miss Jessie knelt with her face near her sister’s, in order to catch the last soft awful whispers. “Oh, Jessie! Jessie! How selfish I have been! God forgive me for letting you sacrifice yourself for me as you did! I have so loved you— and yet I have thought only of myself. God forgive me!” “Hush, love! hush!” said Miss Jessie, sobbing. “And my father, my dear, dear father! I will not complain now, if God will give me strength to be patient. But, oh, Jessie! tell my father how I longed and yearned to see him at last, and to ask his forgiveness. He can never know now how I loved him— oh! if I might but tell him, before I die! What a life of sorrow his has been, and I have done so little to cheer him!” A light came into Miss Jessie’s face. “Would it comfort you, dearest, to think that he does know?— would it comfort you, love, to know that his cares, his sorrows”— Her voice quivered, but she steadied it into calmness— “Mary! he has gone before you to the place where the weary are at rest. He knows now how you loved him.” A strange look, which was not distress, came over Miss Brown’s face. She did not speak for some time, but then we saw her lips form the words, rather than heard the sound— “Father, mother, Harry, Archy;”— then, as if it were a new idea throwing a filmy shadow over her darkened mind— “But you will be alone, Jessie!”