Miss Thusa, like many other metaphysicians, mistook the effect for the cause, and thus stilled, with unconscious sophistry, the upbraidings of her conscience. Helen here tossed upon her feverish couch, and opening her eyes, looked wildly towards the chimney. "Hark! Miss Thusa," she exclaimed, "it's coming. Don't you hear it clattering down the chimney? Don't leave me--don't leave me in the dark--I'm afraid--I'm afraid." It was well for Miss Thusa that Mr. Gleason was not present, to hear the ravings of his child, or his doors would hereafter have been barred against her. Mrs. Gleason, while she mourned over the consequences of her admission, would as soon have cut off her own right hand as she would have spoken harshly or unkindly to the poor, lone woman. She warned her, however, from feeding, in this insane manner, the morbid imagination of her child, and gently forbid her ever repeating _that awful story_, which had made, apparently, so dark and deep an impression. "Above all things, my dear Miss Thusa," said she, repressing a little dry, hacking cough, that often interrupted her speech--"never give her any horrible idea of death. I know that such impressions can never be effaced--I know it by my own experience. The grave has ever been to me a gloomy subject of contemplation, though I gaze upon it with the lamp of faith in my hand, and the remembrance that the Son of God made His bed in its darkness, that light might be left there for me and mine." Miss Thusa looked at Mrs. Gleason as she uttered these sentiments, and the glance of her solemn eye grew earnest as she gazed. Such was the usual quietness and reserve of the speaker, she was not prepared for so much depth of thought and feeling. As she gazed, too, she remarked an appearance of emaciation and suffering about her face, which had hitherto escaped her observation. She recollected her as she first saw her, a beautiful and blooming woman, and now there was bloom without beauty, and brightness without beauty, for the color on the cheek and the gleam of the eye, made one wish for pallor and dimness, as less painful and less prophetic.