“Thank you—­thank you, wise dear Charles; you have lifted a load from my poor, weak, woman’s heart, that had weighed it down too heavily.  I will trust in God more, and dread Julian less.  Oh! how I will pray for you when far away.”

CHAPTER X.

Aunt Green’s Legacy.

At last—­at last, Mrs. Green fell ill, and, hard upon the over-ripe age of eighty-seven, seemed likely to drop into the grave—­to the unspeakable delight of her expectant relatives.  Sooth to say, niece Jane, the soured and long-waiting legatee, had now for years been treating the poor old woman very scurvily:  she had lived too long, and had grown to be a burden; notwithstanding that her ample income still kept on the house, and enabled the general to nurse his own East India Bonds right comfortably.  But still the old aunt would not die, and as they sought not her, nor heir’s (quite contrary to St. Paul’s disinterestedness), she was looked upon in the light of an incumbrance, on her own property and in her own house.  Mrs. Tracy longed to throw off the yoke of dependance, and made small secret of the hatred of the fetter:  for the old woman grew so deaf and blind, that there could be no risk at all, either in speaking one’s mind, or in thoroughly neglecting her.

However, now that the harvest of hope appeared so near, the legatee renewed her old attentions:  Death was a guest so very welcome to the house, that it is no wonder that his arrival was hourly expected with buoyant cheerfulness, and a something in the mask of kindliness:  but I suspect that lamb-skin concealed a very wolf.  So, Mrs. Tracy tenderly inquired of the doctor, and the doctor shook his head; and other doctors came to help, and shook their heads together.  The patient still grew worse—­O, brightening prospect!—­though, now and then, a cordial draught seemed to revive her so alarmingly, that Mrs. Tracy affectionately urging that the stimulants would be too exciting for the poor dear sufferer’s nerves, induced Dr. Graves to discontinue them.  Then those fearful scintillations in her lamp of life grew fortunately duller, and the nurse was by her bed-side night and day; and the old aunt became more and more peevish, and was more and more spoken of by the Tracy family—­in her possible hearing, as “that dear old soul”—­out of it, “that vile old witch.”

Charles, to be sure, was an exception in all this, as he ever was:  for he took on him the Christian office of reading many prayers to the poor decaying creature, and (only that his father would not hear of such a thing) desired to have the vicar to assist him.  Emily also, full of sympathy, and disinterested care, would watch the fretful patient, hour after hour, in those long, dull nights of pain; and the poor, old, perishing sinner loved her coming, for she spoke to her the words of hope and resignation.  Whether that sweet missionary, scarcely yet a convert from