Nanny looked at Edith almost with scorn. "Tell you what I think!" she said. "As well might I tell yonder birds that are hovering with white wings in the blue sky. What do you know of sorrow? but you will not always be strangers. Sorrow is coming over you; I see its dark fold drawing nearer and nearer." A slight shudder came over Edith, but she smiled, and said, soothingly, "I came to talk with you about yourself; let my fate alone for the present." "Ah! no need to shake the glass," answered Nanny; "grief is coming soon enough to drink up your young blood. The cheek that changes like yours, with sudden flushing, withers soonest; not with age, no, not, like mine, with age, but blighted by the cold hand of unkindness; and eyes, like yours, that every emotion fills with sudden tears, soon have their fountains dry, and then, ah! how you will long and pray for one drop, as I do now!" They had entered the poor hovel, and the old woman, who had been speaking in a tone of great excitement, now turned and looked full at Edith: her beauty seemed to awake a feeling of envious contempt. The contrast between them was indeed great. Edith stood in the narrow door, blooming with youth and health. Her dark hair, which contrasted so beautifully with her soft blue eye, had lost its curl by the damp air, and she had taken off her bonnet to put back the uncurled tresses. The old woman had seated herself in an old, high-backed chair, and, with her elbows on her knees, looked earnestly at Edith. Her face might once have been fair; but it was now deeply wrinkled, and bronzed with smoke and exposure. Her teeth were gone, and her thin, shriveled lips had an expression of pain and suffering; while her eyes betrayed the envy and contempt she seemed to feel towards others. "Ah," she said, "gather up your beautiful shining locks. How long, think you, before they will be like mine? But mine were once black and glossy as yours; and now look at them." She took down from under her cap her long, gray hair, and spread it over her breast. It was dry and coarse, and without a single black hair. She laid her dark, bony hand on Edith's white arm. "Sorrow has done this," she said,--"not time: it has been of this color for fifty years." "And have you then suffered so much?" said Edith,--and her eyes filled with tears. The old woman saw that she was pitied, and a more gentle expression came into her eyes, as she fixed them on Edith. "My child," she said, "we can learn to bear sorrow, bereavement, the death of all that are twined with our own souls, old age, solitude,--all but remorse--_all but remorse_;" and the last word was pronounced almost in a whisper. "And cannot you turn to God?" said Edith; "cannot you pray? God has invited all who are sinners to come to him." She stopped; for she felt her own insufficiency to administer religious consolation. "And who told you I was so great a sinner?" said the old woman, all her fierceness returning immediately.