Fani was, of course, the most unhappy of all.  Elsli’s goodness to him in their days of poverty and hardship came clearly to his mind.  How she had silently taken many a punishment and rebuke that were really deserved by him.  He felt keenly that if Elsli did not recover he should never meet with any one to take her place.  He saw now, as he had never seen before, what his sister had been to him.

To Mrs. Stanhope too the blow was a severe one.  She blamed herself for not having noticed that the child had been growing thin and pale during the last few weeks, and she recalled, now that it was too late, several times when she had thought that Elsli looked over-heated and tired, but she had done nothing about it, thinking it only a passing matter.  She sent at once for the physician.  He gave little hope of the child’s recovery.  He said she had evidently been “running down” for some time, and she must have been eating too little and doing too much, and, besides, he suspected some mental depression and anxiety.  All this, acting on a frame naturally delicate and weakened by the hardships of her early years, had more than counteracted the gain that Elsli had certainly made during the first months of her life at Rosemount.

Clarissa then told Mrs. Stanhope the story which the little girl had related to her, and their tears fell fast over the simple tale of pity and self-sacrifice.  Mrs. Stanhope’s heart smote her, as she learned how Elsli had suffered from fear of her displeasure, and from the concealment into which this had led her, a concealment so foreign to her nature.  She went to the child’s bedside, and, embracing her more fondly than she had ever done before, she said tenderly:—­

“I can’t tell you, darling child, how sorry I am that you should have been afraid of me.  I never meant it should be so, but I am naturally reserved, and when my Nora died, I felt as if all my power of loving had died with her.  I liked you, and I meant to take good care of you, but I see now that I have seemed cold to you, and haven’t shown you the love that has really been growing up for you in my heart.  Forgive me, dear, and believe that I do love you, and that I will be a real loving mother to Fani, as I would be to you—­” She stopped, overcome by her own emotion.

Elsli’s face beamed with a radiant smile.  She lifted her feeble arm and laid it around Mrs. Stanhope’s neck.

“I am going to Nora,” she whispered; “I will tell her how good you have been to us.  I love you,” she added, and it went to Mrs. Stanhope’s heart that it was the first time the child had ever said these words to her.  She could not speak, but she drew Elsli’s head to rest upon her shoulder, and in a few moments the sick girl fell asleep with a peaceful look upon her face, and Mrs. Stanhope sat holding her unwearied, till Clarissa came and gently laid the little head back upon the pillows.