‘You saw how she treated him?’ the latter presently said, without moving her hand from before her eyes.

‘Yes, dear.  He forgives her, and will forget it.’

‘Oh!’ she clenched her long thin hand, ’ I pray that I may not die before I have made her repent it.  She shall!’

Juliana looked glitteringly in Caroline’s face, and then fell a-weeping, and suffered herself to be folded and caressed.  The storm was long subsiding.

‘Dearest! you are better now?’ said Caroline.

She whispered:  ‘Yes.’

‘My brother has only to know you, dear—­’

‘Hush!  That’s past.’  Juliana stopped her; and, on a deep breath that threatened to break to sobs, she added in a sweeter voice than was common to her, ‘Ah, why—­why did you tell him about the Beckley property?’

Caroline vainly strove to deny that she had told him.  Juliana’s head shook mournfully at her; and now Caroline knew what Juliana meant when she begged so earnestly that Evan should be kept ignorant of her change of fortune.

Some days after this the cold struck Juliana’s chest, and she sickened.  The three sisters held a sitting to consider what it was best to do with her.  Caroline proposed to take her to Beckley without delay.  Harriet was of opinion that the least they could do was to write to her relatives and make them instantly aware of her condition.

But the Countess said ‘No,’ to both.  Her argument was, that Juliana being independent, they were by no means bound to ‘bundle’ her, in her state, back to a place where she had been so shamefully maltreated:  that here she would live, while there she would certainly die:  that absence of excitement was her medicine, and that here she had it.  Mrs. Andrew, feeling herself responsible as the young lady’s hostess, did not acquiesce in the Countess’s views till she had consulted Juliana; and then apologies for giving trouble were breathed on the one hand; sympathy, condolences, and professions of esteem, on the other.  Juliana said, she was but slightly ill, would soon recover.  Entreated not to leave them before she was thoroughly re-established, and to consent to be looked on as one of the family, she sighed, and said it was the utmost she could hope.  Of course the ladies took this compliment to themselves, but Evan began to wax in importance.  The Countess thought it nearly time to acknowledge him, and supported the idea by a citation of the doctrine, that to forgive is Christian.  It happened, however, that Harriet, who had less art and more will than her sisters, was inflexible.  She, living in a society but a few steps above Tailordom, however magnificent in expenditure and resources, abhorred it solemnly.  From motives of prudence, as well as personal disgust, she continued firm in declining to receive her brother.  She would not relent when the Countess pointed out a dim, a dazzling prospect, growing out of Evan’s proximity to the heiress of Beckley Court; she was not to be moved when Caroline suggested that the specific for the frail invalid was Evan’s presence.  As to this, Juliana was sufficiently open, though, as she conceived, her art was extreme.