She wiped her face with her apron, and then Emma saw an open book upon her knee. "My dear Miss Lindsay," said Susan, "it is no intrusion. I am glad to find a congenial spirit anywhere. My joy at this meeting is inexpressible; for now I know that there is one in this cold-hearted place, one beside my sister Margaret, who can appreciate my feelings." Emma was silent; for she did not understand what those feelings were, or whether she appreciated them or not. "Prom my childhood," continued Susan, "I have been among the people of my race, but not of them. I have stood alone, in a shroud of thoughts, which were not their thoughts; but few understand me, my dear, for I live in an ideal world, and whatever calls me back to this gross creation, makes me perfectly miserable: say, my dear Miss Lindsay, are these your feelings?" "Alas, no," replied Emma; "I love the world too well, and have spent many wretched, sleepless nights because I was unwilling to leave it: but that time is passed. If I have any fear now, it is that my work on earth will not be well done before I am called away." Susan turned a wondering eye upon the pale, weary-looking girl, and for a moment forgot her intense sympathy for herself. "You are sick," said she, with an expression of real interest and concern. "Yes," replied Emma, "that is evident. My friends have tried to hide it from me, and from themselves. They have sent me from place to place, but death is following me everywhere. _I_ never felt it so surely as I do this morning:" and Emma laid her head upon the moss-turf beside Susan. She looked like a faded lily, as she lay there; her white dress scarcely more white than the forehead and cheek upon which her dark damp hair rested heavily. Susan took a handkerchief from her pocket, and wrung it in the clear, cool waters of the brook, and kneeling upon the ground beside Emma, wiped her pale face, and tucking up her sleeves, chafed her poor withered arms, until Emma revived. "Thank you," said she; "I was a little faint. Mamma is so desirous for me to exercise in the open air, that I go every day to the farthest limit of my strength. I was not able to climb that hill this morning." Susan made no reply, but sat looking mournfully into her face. All the morning she had been weeping over the sorrows of an imaginary being whom she had found in a novel wandering about, and falling at every step into the most superlative misery. It was hard for Susan to read, and not identify herself with this beautiful suffering shadow; but now she had come from her ideal world, and was forced, for a time, to forget both the shadow and herself. Close to her father's old farm-house, and in the woods of Sliver-Crook, she saw what, described in a romance, would have been pathetic enough, but which, seen in reality, called out from her heart the good rational sympathy which, though buried in sentimental rubbish, was not dead. "Do you really think," said she, bending over Emma, "that you must----"