Glen Smith's Diary (Page 56)

//Panel 1//
Elizabeth:
What's wrong with your eyes, Julie?
Julie:
Eh? Nothing, my vision just got blurry. …It's eye strain.
//Panel 2//
Julie:
Mama, you were an aristocratic princess, weren't you?
Elizabeth:
Well, heh heh, a long time ago.
//Panel 3//
Julie:
I think what my grandfather wrote in this diary really happened.
//Panel 4//
Julie:
Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could only live in such a village of blooming roses for days on end, the rest of our lives?
//Panel 5//
Elizabeth's Narration:
As if burdened with all the sorrows and hardships of the family…
//Panel 6//
Elizabeth's Narration:　
Without warning, in the winter of her seventeenth year, Julie…
SFX:
DINGDONG
Elizabeth's Narration:
…passed away.
Note:
Jan. 1921
//Panel 7//
SFX:
DONG DONG
Elizabeth:
She never complained.
//Panel 8//
Elizabeth:
Not a word—not even "I'm tired," or "It's so tough."
SFX:
DONG
//Panel 9//
Julie's Voice:
If we could only live in such a village of blooming roses for days on end…
//Panel 10//
Elizabeth:
Not a word…

So Elizabeth was once a member of the aristocracy, but that could have been another lifetime, and she barely acknowledges that this ever was her situation. It seems that while Glen Smith was trapped in the past, she is squarely living in the present—certainly the future holds little for her, either.

The word "苦しい" (kurushii) which we find in Panel 8 generally describes something painful and difficult, but it could mean many things in Japanese, from actual physical pain to a student struggling to pass his or her entrance exams, to a general degree of suffering which people experience due to war, famine, economic hardship and so forth. In this case it could have been a few possibilities, but I opted to interpret this as the overall difficulties that Elizabeth's family, not to mention the country as a whole, were going through post-Great War (obviously we know it as World War I, but of course people at that time didn't know yet that the next one was coming!).