And the “rest of them” had good reason to breathe the same prayer, for Marie paraded her new misery as the reason and apology for all sorts of inflictions on every one about her.  Every word that was spoken by anybody, everything that was done or was not done everywhere, was only a new proof that she was surrounded by hard-hearted, insensible beings, who were unmindful of her peculiar sorrows.  Poor Eva heard some of these speeches; and nearly cried her little eyes out, in pity for her mamma, and in sorrow that she should make her so much distress.

In a week or two, there was a great improvement of symptoms,—­one of those deceitful lulls, by which her inexorable disease so often beguiles the anxious heart, even on the verge of the grave.  Eva’s step was again in the garden,—­in the balconies; she played and laughed again,—­and her father, in a transport, declared that they should soon have her as hearty as anybody.  Miss Ophelia and the physician alone felt no encouragement from this illusive truce.  There was one other heart, too, that felt the same certainty, and that was the little heart of Eva.  What is it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly, so clearly, that its earthly time is short?  Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature, or the soul’s impulsive throb, as immortality draws on?  Be it what it may, it rested in the heart of Eva, a calm, sweet, prophetic certainty that Heaven was near; calm as the light of sunset, sweet as the bright stillness of autumn, there her little heart reposed, only troubled by sorrow for those who loved her so dearly.

For the child, though nursed so tenderly, and though life was unfolding before her with every brightness that love and wealth could give, had no regret for herself in dying.

In that book which she and her simple old friend had read so much together, she had seen and taken to her young heart the image of one who loved the little child; and, as she gazed and mused, He had ceased to be an image and a picture of the distant past, and come to be a living, all-surrounding reality.  His love enfolded her childish heart with more than mortal tenderness; and it was to Him, she said, she was going, and to his home.

But her heart yearned with sad tenderness for all that she was to leave behind.  Her father most,—­for Eva, though she never distinctly thought so, had an instinctive perception that she was more in his heart than any other.  She loved her mother because she was so loving a creature, and all the selfishness that she had seen in her only saddened and perplexed her; for she had a child’s implicit trust that her mother could not do wrong.  There was something about her that Eva never could make out; and she always smoothed it over with thinking that, after all, it was mamma, and she loved her very dearly indeed.

She felt, too, for those fond, faithful servants, to whom she was as daylight and sunshine.  Children do not usually generalize; but Eva was an uncommonly mature child, and the things that she had witnessed of the evils of the system under which they were living had fallen, one by one, into the depths of her thoughtful, pondering heart.  She had vague longings to do something for them,—­to bless and save not only them, but all in their condition,—­longings that contrasted sadly with the feebleness of her little frame.