Page:Duty and Inclination 2.pdf/188

186 till nature, no longer able to support such a trial, at last sunk; her whole nervous system became relaxed, a debility of frame ensued, truly alarming, attended at intervals by an abstraction, and as it were, a total suspension of idea and thought.

It was then that Oriana shone in the light of the purest female virtue; vigilant and attentive she would scarcely for a moment forsake her sister's languid couch. There bending over her, with eyes bathed in tears, she watched the progress of her beloved Rosilia's melancholy disorder; she beheld her, pale, exhausted, either in listless inanition, or haunted with the dreadful idea that mental derangement or death would terminate her sufferings!

In this frightful crisis of her disorder, Rosilia clinging to her mother or sister, or supported within their embrace, would utter the most wild and incoherent expressions, sometimes calling upon the name of Douglas, at others upon that of Philimore, unconscious how she pierced her sister's heart, and of the terror she occasioned her, lest she should, in her total forgetfulness and confusion of thought, betray the secret of her attachment; rousing at the same time every sentiment of compassion and alarm in her tender parents!

Six weeks thus elapsed, when, though still sunk,