There was a fire in the grate, a small one, for the coal was economised by means of two large fire-bricks, and on a table (Augusta’s writing table), placed at the further side of the room, was a paraffin-lamp turned low. Drawn up in front, but a little to one side of the fire, was a sofa, covered with red rep, and on the sofa lay a fair-haired little form, so thin and fragile that it looked like the ghost or outline of a girl, rather than a girl herself. It was Jeannie, her sick sister, and she was asleep. Augusta stole softly up to look at her. It was a sweet little face that her eyes fell on, although it was so shockingly thin, with long, curved lashes, delicate nostrils, and a mouth shaped like a bow. All the lines and grooves which the chisel of Pain knows so well how to carve were smoothed out of it now, and in their place lay the shadow of a smile. Augusta looked at her and clenched her fists, while a lump rose in her throat, and her grey eyes filled with tears. How could she get the money to save her? The year before a rich man, a man who was detestable to her, had wanted to marry her, and she would have nothing to say to him. He had gone abroad, else she would have gone back to him and married him—at a price. Marry him? yes she would marry him: she would do anything for money to take her sister away! What did she care for herself when her darling was dying—dying for the want of two hundred pounds! Just then Jeannie woke up, and stretched her arms out to her. “So you are back at last, dear,” she said in her sweet childish voice. “It has been so lonely without you. Why, how wet you are! Take off your jacket at once, Gussie, or you will soon be as ill as”—and here she broke out into a terrible fit of coughing, that seemed to shake her tender frame as the wind shakes a reed. Her sister turned and obeyed, and then came and sat by the sofa and took the thin little hand in hers. “Well, Gussie, and how did you get on with the Printer-devil” (this was her impolite name for the great Meeson); “will he give you any more money?” “No, dear; we quarrelled, that was all, and I came away.” “Then I suppose that we can’t go abroad?” Augusta was too moved to answer; she only shook her head. The child buried her face in the pillow and gave a sob or two. Presently she was quiet, and lifted it again. “Gussie, love,” she said, “don’t be angry, but I want to speak to you. Listen, my sweet Gussie, my angel. Oh, Gussie, you don’t know how I love you! It is all no good, it is useless struggling against it, I must die sooner or later; though I am only twelve, and you think me such a child, I am old enough to understand that. I think,” she added, after pausing to cough, “that pain makes one old: I feel as though I were fifty. Well, so you see I may as well give up fighting against it and die at once. I am only a burden and anxiety to you—I may as well die at once and go to sleep.”