As susceptible as they are to pleasure so are they to pain; and raised far above others in the enjoyment of the one, so is their grief doubled in comparison with those of more happy, because more even temperaments.

So it was with Emmeline; and her mother felt all this as she stood beside her, watching with tearful sympathy the first real grief of her darling child.

Emmeline had cast herself on her knees beside her couch; she had buried her face in her hands, while the sobs that burst incessantly from her swelling bosom shook her frail figure convulsively; the blue veins in her throat had swelled as if in suffocation, and her fair hair, loosened from its confinement by her agitation, hung wildly around her.
"Emmeline," Mrs.Hamilton said, gently and falteringly, but her child heard her not, and she twined her arm around her, and tried to draw her towards her.
"My own darling Emmeline, speak to me; I cannot bear to see you thus.
Look up, love; for my sake calm this excited feeling." "May I not even weep?
Would you deny me that poor comfort ?" burst almost passionately from the lips of Emmeline, for every faculty was bewildered in that suddenly-excited woe.

She looked up; her eyes were bloodshot and haggard, her cheek flushed, and the veins drawn like cords across her brow.
"Weep: would your mother forbid you that blessed comfort and relief, my Emmeline?
Could you indeed accuse me of such cruelty ?" replied Mrs.
Hamilton, bending over her as she spoke, and removing from those flushed temples the hair which hung heavy with moisture upon them, and as she did so Emmeline felt the tears of her mother fall thick and fast on her own scorching brow.

She started from her knees, gazed wildly and doubtingly upon her, and tottering from exhaustion, would have fallen, had not Mrs.Hamilton, with a sudden movement, received her in her arms.
For a moment Emmeline struggled as if to break from her embrace, but then, with a sudden transition of feeling, clasped her arms convulsively about her mother's neck, and burst into a long and violent but relieving flood of tears.
"I meant never, never to have revealed my secret," she exclaimed, in a voice almost inaudible, as her mother, seating her on a couch near them, pressed her to her heart, and permitted some minutes to pass away in that silence of sympathy which to the afflicted is so dear.