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, Jo became almost her old self for the moment, gay, cheerful, blooming,—­alas! with the bloom of feverishness and vain hope.

So spring drew near.  The mill was nearly finished.  One day in March a warm south-wind “quieted the earth” after a long rain, the river began to stir, its mail of ice to crack and heave under the sun’s rays.  I persuaded Jo to take a little drive, and once in the carriage the air reanimated her; she rested against me and talked more than I had known her for weeks.

“What a lovely day!” said she; “how balmy the air is! there is such an expression of rest without despair, such calm expectation!  I always think of heaven such days, Sally!—­they are like the long sob with which a child finishes weeping.  Only to think of never more knowing tears!—­that is life indeed!”

A keen pang pierced me at the vibration of her voice as she spoke.  I thought to soothe her a little, and said, “Heaven can be no more than love, Jo, and we have a great deal of that on earth.”