Page:Francesca Carrara 3.pdf/94

Rh have been like a faint fragrance—too delicate for the overpowering atmosphere on which it was fated to waste its fragile existence. With his active and intriguing temper, Francis would doubtless have taken an eager part in the court cabals and conspiracies which make the history of Charles the Second; and how useless in such would he have found Lucy! Neglect would have been her inevitable portion, and to her that would have been worse than death—perhaps death itself.

There is a flower which our earth is too rude to nourish, and whose sole existence is in the clear pure atmosphere; such a flower is Lucy's best emblem. The harsher duties and cares of this weary world were not for her—her natural element was affection. For days and nights Francesca watched beside her pillow, and patiently soothed the sorrowful invalid. Both had much to say—for the nurse had her own course of discipline to pursue with her patient. From the beginning she recounted her own history; and the effect was what she anticipated—indignation became Lucy's strongest sensation; she could not comprehend such duplicity, and she even exaggerated its cruelty and its wrong. There was also a little feminine vanity—a quick sense of injury—