If I looked abroad at sunset, I could see the windows of the village mansions, crimsoned and glowing with the last flames of day; but no light was reflected on our darkened home. It was all in shadow. And at night, when the windows of Grandison Place were all illuminated, glittering off by itself like a great lantern, the traveller could scarcely have caught the glimmering ray of the little lamp dimly burning in our curtained room. Do you think I was resigned? That because I was dumb, I lay like a lamb before the stroke of the shearer? I will tell you how resigned, how submissive I was. I have read of the tortures of the Inquisition. I have read of one who was chained on his back to the dungeon floor, without the power to move one muscle,--hand and foot, body and limb bound. As he lay thus prone, looking up, ever upwards, he saw a circular knife, slowly descending, swinging like a pendulum, swinging nearer and nearer; and he knew that every breath he drew it came nearer and nearer, and that he _must_ feel anon the cold, sharp edge. Yet he lay still, immovable, frozen, waiting, with his glazed eyes fixed on the terrible weapon. Such was _my_ resignation--_my_ submission. Friends gathered around the desolate; but they could not avert the descending stroke. Mrs. Linwood came, with her angelic looking daughter, and their presence lighted up, momentarily, our saddened dwelling, as if they had been messengers from heaven,--they were so kind, so sympathizing, so unobtrusive. When Edith first crossed our threshold, she did indeed look like one of those ministering spirits, sent to watch over those who shall be heirs of salvation. She seemed to float forward, light and airy as the down wafted by the summer gale. Her crutches, the ends of which were wrapped with something soft and velvety, so as to muffle their sound, rather added than detracted from the interest and grace of her appearance, so gracefully they sustained her fair, white-robed form, just lifting it above the earth. A little while before, I should have shrunk with nervous diffidence from the approach of guests like these. I should have contrasted painfully the splendor of their position with the lowliness of our own,--but now, what were wealth or rank or earthly distinctions to me? I was sitting by my mother's bed, fanning her slumbers, as they entered. Mrs. Linwood walked noiselessly forward, took the fan gently from my hand, and motioned me to resign my seat to her. I did so mechanically, for it seemed she had a right to be there. Then Edith took me by the hand and looked in my face with an expression of such sweet, unaffected sympathy, I turned aside to hide the quick-gushing tears. Not a word was uttered, yet I knew they came to soothe and comfort.