Maria!  I fear lest my griefs should prove obtrusive.  Yet bear with me a little—­I have recovered already a share of my former spirits.

I fear more for Allan than myself.  The loss of two such parents, within so short an interval, bears very heavy on him.  The boy hangs about me from morning till night.  He is perpetually forcing a smile into his poor pale cheeks—­you know the sweetness of his smile, Maria.

To-day, after dinner, when he took his glass of wine in his hand, he burst into tears, and would not, or could not then, tell me the reason—­afterwards he told me—­“he had been used to drink Mamma’s health after dinner, and that came into his head and made him cry.”  I feel the claims the boy has upon me—­I perceive that I am living to some end—­and the thought supports me.

Already I have attained to a state of complacent feelings—­my mother’s lessons were not thrown away upon her Elinor.

In the visions of last night her spirit seemed to stand at my bedside—­a light, as of noonday, shone upon the room—­she opened my curtains—­she smiled upon me with the same placid smile as in her lifetime.  I felt no fear.  “Elinor,” she said, “for my sake take care of young Allan,”—­and I awoke with calm feelings.

Maria! shall not the meeting of blessed spirits, think you, he something like this?—­I think, I could even now behold my mother without dread—­I would ask pardon of her for all my past omissions of duty, for all the little asperities in my temper, which have so often grieved her gentle spirit when living.  Maria!  I think she would not turn away from me.

Oftentimes a feeling, more vivid than memory, brings her before me—­I see her sit in her old elbow-chair—­her arms folded upon her lap—­a tear upon her cheek, that seems to upbraid her unkind daughter for some inattention—­I wipe it away and kiss her honored lips.

Maria! when I have been fancying all this, Allan will come in, with his poor eyes red with weeping, and taking me by the hand, destroy the vision in a moment.

I am prating to you, my sweet cousin, but it is the prattle of the heart, which Maria loves.  Besides, whom have I to talk to of these things but you?—­you have been my counsellor in times past, my companion, and sweet familiar friend.  Bear with me a little—­I mourn the “cherishers of my infancy.”

I sometimes count it a blessing that my father did not prove the survivor.  You know something of his story.  You know there was a foul tale current—­it was the busy malice of that bad man, S——­, which helped to spread it abroad—­you will recollect the active good-nature of our friends W——­ and T——­; what pains they took to undeceive people—­with the better sort their kind labors prevailed; but there was still a party who shut their ears.  You know the issue of it.  My father’s great spirit bore up against it for some time—­my father never was a bad man—­but that spirit was broken at the last—­and the greatly-injured man was forced to leave his old paternal dwelling in Staffordshire—­for the neighbors had begun to point at him.  Maria!  I have seen them point at him, and have been ready to drop.