The quiet creature, in a few weeks, put quite a new feature on the face of affairs. Under her eye, things seemed at once to fall into their proper places--without the slightest "ordering," or bustling, or noise, or palaver. Elizabeth could not make out how it was, but sure enough Jane "had _such_ a way with her," and always had. The positions of the sisters seemed now to be reversed. Jane was looked up to by her sister, who no longer assumed those airs of superiority, which, in the pride of her beauty and attractiveness, had come so natural to her. Elizabeth had ceased to be competed for by rival admirers; and she now discovered that the fleeting charms of her once beautiful person could not atone for the want of those more solid qualities which are indispensable in the house and the home. What made Jane's presence more valuable at this juncture was, that illness had come into the household, and, worst of all, it had seized upon the head of the family. This is always a serious calamity in any case; but in this case the consequences threatened to be more serious than usual. An extensive business was interrupted; large transactions, which only the head of the concern himself, could adequately attend to, produced embarrassments, the anxiety connected with which impeded a cure. All the resources of medicine were applied; all the comfort, warmth, silence, and attention that careful nursing could administer, were tried; and tried in vain. The husband of Elizabeth died, and her children were fatherless; but the fatherless are not forsaken--they are the care of God.
Now it was that the noble nature of aunt Jane came grandly into view. Her sister was stricken down--swallowed up in grief. Life, for her, had lost its charm. The world was as if left without its sun. She was utterly overwhelmed. Even the faces of her children served only to awaken her to a quicker sense of misery. But aunt Jane's energies were only awakened to renewed life and vigor. To these orphans she was now both father and mother in one. What woman can interfere in _business_ matters without risk of censure? But Jane interfered: she exerted herself to wind up the affairs of the deceased; and she did so; she succeeded! There was but little left; only enough to live upon, and that meanly. Every thing was sold off--the grand house was broken up--and the family subsided into the ranks of the genteel poor. Elizabeth could not bear up under such a succession of shocks. She was not querulous, but her sorrows were too much for her, and she fed upon them--she petted them, and they became her masters. A few years passed, and the broken-down woman was laid in the same grave with her husband.