Chapter 12

XII

What measure of belief her explanation of Evelina's return
obtained in the small circle of her friends Ann Eliza did not pause
to enquire. Though she could not remember ever having told a lie
before, she adhered with rigid tenacity to the consequences of her
first lapse from truth, and fortified her original statement with
additional details whenever a questioner sought to take her
unawares.

But other and more serious burdens lay on her startled
conscience. For the first time in her life she dimly faced the
awful problem of the inutility of self-sacrifice. Hitherto she had
never thought of questioning the inherited principles which had
guided her life. Self-effacement for the good of others had always
seemed to her both natural and necessary; but then she had taken it
for granted that it implied the securing of that good. Now she
perceived that to refuse the gifts of life does not ensure their
transmission to those for whom they have been surrendered; and her
familiar heaven was unpeopled. She felt she could no longer trust
in the goodness of God, and there was only a black abyss above the
roof of Bunner Sisters.

But there was little time to brood upon such problems. The
care of Evelina filled Ann Eliza's days and nights. The hastily
summoned doctor had pronounced her to be suffering from pneumonia,
and under his care the first stress of the disease was relieved.
But her recovery was only partial, and long after the doctor's
visits had ceased she continued to lie in bed, too weak to move,
and seemingly indifferent to everything about her.

At length one evening, about six weeks after her return, she
said to her sister: "I don't feel's if I'd ever get up again."

Ann Eliza turned from the kettle she was placing on the stove.
She was startled by the echo the words woke in her own breast.

"Don't you talk like that, Evelina! I guess you're on'y tired
out--and disheartened."

"Yes, I'm disheartened," Evelina murmured.

A few months earlier Ann Eliza would have met the confession
with a word of pious admonition; now she accepted it in silence.

"Maybe you'll brighten up when your cough gets better," she
suggested.

"Yes--or my cough'll get better when I brighten up," Evelina
retorted with a touch of her old tartness.

"Does your cough keep on hurting you jest as much?"

"I don't see's there's much difference."

"Well, I guess I'll get the doctor to come round again," Ann
Eliza said, trying for the matter-of-course tone in which one might
speak of sending for the plumber or the gas-fitter.

"It ain't any use sending for the doctor--and who's going to
pay him?"

"I am," answered the elder sister. "Here's your