Three years from that day she read the announcement of Amy's death, and in two years more she refused the doctor's offer to give her a home by his lonely fireside, and a place in his widowed heart.

All this had the effect of making Berintha rather cross, but she seldom manifested her spite toward any one except Lucy, whom she seemed to take peculiar delight in teasing, and whose treatment of herself was not such as would warrant much kindness in return.
Lizzie she had always loved, and when Harry Graham went away it was on Berintha's lap that the young girl sobbed out her grief, wondering, when with her tears Berintha's were mingled, how one apparently so cold and passionless could sympathize with her.

To no one had Berintha ever confided the story of her early love.

Mr.Dayton was a schoolboy then, and as but little was said of it at the time, it faded entirely from memory; and when Lucy called her a "crabbed old maid," she knew not of the disappointment which had clouded every joy and imbittered a whole lifetime.
At the first intelligence of Lizzie's illness Berintha came, and though her prescriptions of every kind of herb tea in the known world were rather numerous, and her doses of the same were rather large, and though her stiff cap, sharp nose, and curious little eyes, which saw everything, were exceedingly annoying to Lucy, she proved herself an invaluable nurse, warming up old Dr.Benton's heart into a glow of admiration of her wonderful skill! Hour after hour she sat by Lizzie, bathing her burning brow, or smoothing her tumbled pillow.

Night after night she kept her tireless watch, treading softly around the sick-room, and lowering her loud, harsh voice to a whisper, lest she should disturb the uneasy slumbers of the sick girl, who, under her skilful nursing, gradually grew better.
"Was there ever such a dear, good cousin," said Lizzie, one day, when a nervous headache had been coaxed away by what Berintha called her "mesmeric passes;" and "Was there ever such a horrid bore," said Lucy, on the same day, when Cousin Berintha "thought she saw a white hair in Lucy's raven curls!" adding, by way of consolation, "It wouldn't be anything strange, for I began to grow gray before I was as old as you." "And that accounts tor your head being just the color of wool," angrily retorted Lucy, little dreaming of the bitter tears and sleepless nights which had early blanched her cousin's hair to its present whiteness.
For several winters Lucy had been in the habit of giving a large party, and as she had heard that St.Leon was soon going South, she felt anxious to have it take place ere he left town.