At last she grew calm, and rising up, said to him:
"Excuse me, I am not often so upset--I have not cried in years--not
since Rover died," here her voice trembled again, but she went on quite
steadily. "He was all the companion I had, you know, and he was so
faithful, so true. Oh, it almost broke my heart when he died and left me
there alone!"
There was a world of pathos in her voice, as she uttered the last two
words, "There alone," and it flashed upon Burton that there was more
meaning in them than was at first indicated; that to live there alone
was something from which his sister recoiled. Standing before her, with
his hand still upon her head, he remembered, that she had not always
been as she was now, so quiet and impassive, with no smile upon her
face, no joy in her dark eyes. As a young girl, in the days when he,
too, lived at home, and slept under the rafters in the low-roofed house,
she had been full of life and frolic, and played with him all day long.
She was very pretty then, and her checks, now so colorless, were red as
the damask roses which grew by the kitchen door, while her wavy hair was
brown, like the chestnuts they used to gather from the trees, in the
rocky pasture land.
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