Ah, do you know what it is, this
assumption of gaiety when the heart is breaking?--this dread fear lest
those about you should detect the truth? Have _you_ ever lived with this
mask upon your face?--which can only be thrown off at night in the
privacy of your own chamber, when you may abandon yourself to your
desolation, and pray heaven to take you or give you increased strength to
_live_ and _bear_? It may seem a light thing, this state of heart that I
am telling you about; but it has killed both men and women, for all that;
and killed them in silence.
Anne Ashton had never complained. She did everything she had been used to
doing, was particular about all her duties; but a nervous cough attacked
her, and her frame wasted, and her cheek grew hectic. Try as she would
she could not eat: all she confessed to, when questioned by Mrs. Ashton,
was "a pain in her throat;" and Mr. Hillary was called in. Anne laughed:
there was nothing the matter with her, she said, and her throat was
better; she had strained it perhaps. The doctor was a wise doctor; his
professional visits were spent in gossip; and as to medicine, he sent her
a tonic, and told her to take it or not as she pleased. Only time, he
said to Mrs. Ashton--she would be all right in time; the summer heat was
making her languid.
The summer heat had nearly passed now, and perhaps some of the battle was
passing with it.
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