But this is a digression: to return to my story. Rosa had one solace left, the best of all: Walter remained true to her. He did not turn from her now that she was poor; he did not look less kindly on her because the elegant talents he had been so proud of were now exerted for her maintenance; nor was he less anxious to call her his wife now that her helpless family were in a degree dependent on her--far from that; he but cherished her the more fondly now that she had so little left her. He was true to her and to himself. He would have gladly taken her abroad with him; but this could not be, for she had her duties to fulfill. Her sisters were too young to support themselves; and as her exertions were so necessary to the family, she decided on not marrying till she had put them all forward. Walter could not combat so praiseworthy a resolution, he could only sigh and acquiesce in it; and indeed Rosa did not keep it without severe self-sacrifice. Say, is it nothing, when love, worth, and competence are offered to our grasp, to put them by--to toil on day by day, year after year--to feel that he we love better than life itself, better than all the world holds (save duty) is alone, uncheered in his task, far from us, from his home, perhaps ill and no one near to minister to him, while we might be his all, his wife?--to doubt even his truth, as the year drags wearily on, and friends fall off in turn, and the world turns harsh and dreary, and we feel our own once-loved charms decrease, and we compare ourselves with bitter regret to what we were when he first knew us; and yet a word would unite us never more to part--would solve each dreading doubt, would set our trembling alarms at rest: is it nothing to feel and fear all this, and yet pursue the path which still keeps us from the haven? No, no, this indeed is the Battle of Life, when hopes and affections are opposed to duty. When duties themselves jar, then comes our bitter, bitter trial. Rosa and Walter bore their burden nobly; but her mind was torn, worn out in the strife. The excitement of her art was wearing in itself. When the fancy paints what the unpracticed hand can not yet realize; when the unerring decrees of a cultivated taste condemn the sketches which poverty forces before the world; when the exhausted soul and body would gladly renovate themselves by complete inaction; but the demon of want cries work, work, and the cry must be obeyed. And then the drudgery of teaching, when the clumsy attempts of a tasteless, often unwilling pupil, seem like desecration of the art we worship--oh, this indeed is torture! It needed not the sickening misery of hope deferred, the blight of early hopes in addition, to pale the poor girl's cheek and break her spirits. Her appetite grew uncertain, her eye and step were heavy; her art became a task; her temper even was rendered variable. Mrs. Lindsay was alarmed, and called in a physician.