The answer informed me of the sad family story, which I have
been just relating to you. Mrs. Welwyn had then been buried about
three months; and Ida, in her childish way, was trying, as she
had promised, to supply her mother's place to her infant sister
Rosamond.
I only mention this simple incident, because it is necessary,
before I proceed to the eventful part of my narrative, that you
should know exactly in what relation the sisters stood toward one
another from the first. Of all the last parting words that Mrs.
Welwyn had spoken to her child, none had been oftener repeated,
none more solemnly urged, than those which had commended the
little Rosamond to Ida's love and care. To other persons, the
full, the all-trusting dependence which the dying mother was
known to have placed in a child hardly eleven years old, seemed
merely a proof of that helpless desire to cling even to the
feeblest consolations, which the approach of death so often
brings with it. But the event showed that the trust so strangely
placed had not been ventured vainly when it was committed to
young and tender hands. The whole future existence of the child
was one noble proof that she had been worthy of her mother's
dying confidence, when it was first reposed in her. In that
simple incident which I have just mentioned the new life of the
two motherless sisters was all foreshadowed.
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