I awoke from a
delirious trance. Kind faces were around my bed, loving looks were
bent on me by all, by my dear father and dear sisters; but I
scarcely saw them before I swooned again.
When I recovered from that long illness, through which I had been
nursed so tenderly, the pitying looks I met made me tremble. I
asked for a looking-glass. It was long denied me, but my
importunity prevailed at last--a mirror was brought. My youth was
gone at one fell swoop. The glass showed me a livid and haggard
face, blanched and bloodless as of one who sees a specter; and in
the ashen lips, and wrinkled brow, and dim eyes, I could trace
nothing of my old self. The hair, too, jetty and rich before, was
now as white as snow; and in one night the ravages of half a
century had passed over my face. Nor have my nerves ever recovered
their tone after that dire shock. Can you wonder that my life was
blighted, that my lover shrank from me, so sad a wreck was I?
I am old now--old and alone. My sisters would have had me to live
with them, but I chose not to sadden their genial homes with my
phantom face and dead eyes.
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