Our Refugee Household (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SISTER MADDIE'S STORY; LEOLINE AND ROSALINE. When I was ten years old, there came to reside with us a friend of my mother an unmarried lady of about my mother's own age, twenty-eight years named Leoline Marchmont. I remember, now, the immediate and deep impression she made upon me by her peculiar beauty and grace, and particularly by the expression of her large, sad hazel eyes. The first opportunity that I had after her arrival, I questioned my mother respecting her, and why so beautiful a lady did not marry. I received the following reply: " She was to have been married several years since, but, for reasons you cannot understand, the engagement was broken. Apart from this fact, her life has been singularly sad she has but one living relation in the world, from whom she is severed by peculiar circumstances. Let us do all that we can.now she is with us, to make her happy, or, at least, contented." "Mother," I still inquired, for I was an inquisitive child, " who is this only relation ?" " I cannot tell yon," she replied. " Question me no more; it is a subject that Leoline never speaks of, neither must you." Of course my curiosity regarding her was increased tenfold by this reply, and my interest also. I soon attached myself to the beautiful Leoline, and we became devoted to each other. I was the only one who could drive the sad look from her face, and once I astonished the family by making her laugh heartily at some of my childish pranks. One night- -she had been with us then about two months I, among other members of the family, was startled from sleep by a loud shriek. The cause of it I never knew until many years after, though the next day I was told by my mother that Leoline had a sister, who had arrived suddenly the night before; that she was ill in Leol...