But Miss Wimple's trial was not yet at its worst. The low-necked dress had been as unseasonable as the substitution of the hooped skirt for the quilted petticoat was imprudent. Before Madeline had been gone a week, she contracted, as was to be feared, a heavy cold, which within a month assumed a chronic bronchial form, attended with alarming symptoms. The extreme dejection of spirits, consequent upon her persecuted loneliness, had predisposed her to disease in the first place, and aggravated its character when it came. At last she fell dangerously ill, and with the closing of the shop--for she could hire no one to attend in it--came poverty in its most dreadful form. But for the charity of her kind physician, who sent a servant-girl, a mere child, to nurse her, and daily kept her supplied with proper nourishment from his own house, she would, so it seemed to her, have died of neglect and starvation. Yet better, she thought, to depart even so, than linger on, when such lingering taxed the patience and the faith beyond the loftiest examples of religion. Miss Wimple was too stout-hearted to cry for death, though she felt, that, having lived with heroism, she could at least die with presence of mind. She waited, with a composure that had a strange quality of pride. In her New York home, Mrs. Morris, the governess, was as happy as she dared to feel. In Mr. Osgood's family she had found all things as Miss Wimple had promised. Treated with studious deference and consideration, not unmixed with affection, she enjoyed for her secret thoughts the most privileged privacy. Her brave gratitude was superior to the distress a weaker woman might have suffered from the necessity of making Mr. Osgood unreservedly acquainted with her story, in order to enlist his aid to procure tidings of Miss Wimple, whose safety, health, and happiness were now far dearer to her than her own. She did tell him all, and had reason to thank God for the courage that made it a possible, even an easy, thing for her to do. Her truly noble benefactor and protector, receiving her communication as if he then heard it for the first time, assured her that in thus confiding in the freedom of his mind, and in his honor, she had set up a new and stronger claim to his interest and friendly care. She had but enlarged his obligation to his until then unknown correspondent for having given his children, to whom their governess had already truly endeared herself, so admirable a teacher, so precious a friend. ["But why," you will ask, "did not Madeline write to Miss Wimple?" Because that provident angel had, without explanation, exacted from her a promise that she would in no case write _first_. In truth, Miss Wimple foresaw her own various suffering, and sought to spare Madeline some cruel pangs, and herself the hard trial of disingenuous correspondence.]