The loss--a loss only to them, and not to her, the darling!--became familiar, and ceased to wound; the blessedness was ever new.

"Ay, and she shall be blessed," had said my dear father.

So she was.

From her, or for her, her parents never had to endure a single pain.

Even the sicknesses of infancy and childhood, of which the three others had their natural share, always passed her by, as if in pity.