Page:The Poor Rich Man, and the Rich Poor Man.djvu/173

Rh sorrow for her sufferings, and of gratitude that a husband's unfaithfulness, that poverty and sickness, had all been God's ministers to bring her to heaven.

lesson in the economy of human life might have been learned in the dying Paulina's apartment. Her last excess, her last draught of gin, taken in an excited and feverish state, had accelerated her disease. She had a raging fever, and her cough was attended by spasms that, at each recurrence, threatened her with instant death. Charlotte, after in vain searching for some comfortable garments among the relics of Paulina's evil days—after turning over stained silk dresses, tattered gauzes, yellow blonde laces, and tangled artificial flowers, had furnished from her own stores clean apparel suitable for a sick woman.

"Oh, Lottie, please," said Paulina, pointing to the various articles of old finery that hung about the room, or over the sides of her broken bandboxes, "please put them all out of my sight—they seem like so many witnesses against me—they taunt me for my sin and folly. How good this clean snug cap feels—how kind it is of you to lend me these things!"