orders to be sent for should there be the slightest change, returned home.
It was a great relief to her oppressed spirits to find that her grandmother had an old friend come to pass the day with her, so the Cassandra was left in repose for that morning at least. She sought the little chamber peculiarly appropriated to her own use; and, seating herself by the window, sank into a sad and listless reverie.
It is a mood whose "profitless dejection" there are few among us but what have known. It is the result of the overstrained nerves, the worn-out frame—something of bodily weakness must mingle with it. We turn away from the future, we are too desponding to look forward. Every sorrow of the past seems to rise up, not only as a recollection of suffering, but as if each were an omen of what is to come. We feel as if even to wish were a folly; or, worse, a tempting of fate. We have no confidence in our own good fortune; it seems as if the mere fact of wishing were enough to have that wish
