When, in time, two others were added to the nursery troop, Lillie became a perfect model of a gracious, motherly, little older sister.
Did all this patience and devotion of the husband at last awaken any thing like love in the wife?
Lillie was not naturally rich in emotion.
Under the best education and development, she would have been rather wanting in the loving power; and the whole course of her education had been directed to suppress what little she had, and to concentrate all her feelings upon herself.
The factitious and unnatural life she had lived so many years had seriously undermined the stamina of her constitution; and, after the birth of her third child, her health failed altogether.

Lillie thus became in time a chronic invalid, exacting, querulous, full of troubles and wants which tasked the patience of all around her.

During all these trying years, her husband's faithfulness never faltered.
As he gradually retrieved his circumstances, she was first in every calculation.

Because he knew that here lay his greatest temptation, here he most rigidly performed his duty.

Nothing that money could give to soften the weariness of sickness was withheld; and John was for hours and hours, whenever he could spare the time, himself a personal, assiduous, unwearied attendant in the sick-room..