The factitious and unnatural life she had lived so many years had seriously undermined the stamina of her constitution; and, after the birth of her third child, her health failed altogether.  Lillie thus became in time a chronic invalid, exacting, querulous, full of troubles and wants which tasked the patience of all around her.  During all these trying years, her husband’s faithfulness never faltered.  As he gradually retrieved his circumstances, she was first in every calculation.  Because he knew that here lay his greatest temptation, here he most rigidly performed his duty.  Nothing that money could give to soften the weariness of sickness was withheld; and John was for hours and hours, whenever he could spare the time, himself a personal, assiduous, unwearied attendant in the sick-room.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE NEW LILLIE.

[Illustration]

We have but one scene more before our story closes.  It is night now in Lillie’s sick-room; and her mother is anxiously arranging the drapery, to keep the fire-light from her eyes, stepping noiselessly about the room.  She lies there behind the curtains, on her pillow,—­the wreck and remnant only of what was once so beautiful.  During all these years, when the interests and pleasures of life have been slowly dropping, leaf by leaf, and passing away like fading flowers, Lillie has learned to do much thinking.  It sometimes seems to take a stab, a thrust, a wound, to open in some hearts the capacity of deep feeling and deep thought.  There are things taught by suffering that can be taught in no other way.  By suffering sometimes is wrought out in a person the power of loving, and of appreciating love.  During the first year, Lillie had often seemed to herself in a sort of wild, chaotic state.  The coming in of a strange new spiritual life was something so inexplicable to her that it agitated and distressed her; and sometimes, when she appeared more petulant and fretful than usual, it was only the stir and vibration on her weak nerves of new feelings, which she wanted the power to express.  These emotions at first were painful to her.  She felt weak, miserable, and good for nothing.  It seemed to her that her whole life had been a wretched cheat, and that she had ill repaid the devotion of her husband.  At first these thoughts only made her bitter and angry; and she contended against them.  But, as she sank from day to day, and grew weaker and weaker, she grew more gentle; and a better spirit seemed to enter into her.

On this evening that we speak of, she had made up her mind that she would try and tell her husband some of the things that were passing in her mind.

“Tell John I want to see him,” she said to her mother.  “I wish he would come and sit with me.”

This was a summons for which John invariably left every thing.  He laid down his book as the word was brought to him, and soon was treading noiselessly at her bedside.