earful a delusion. And if the
whole condition of her mind had been low and selfish, while her
conscience had given her no hint of anything being amiss, where was she
to begin to rectify her being? She felt wholly degraded.

And then what a set of pictures rose up before her excited fancy!
Philip going forth for a walk with her and Hester, after having just
sealed a letter to Miss Bruce, carrying the consciousness of what he had
been saying to the mistress of his heart, while she, Margaret, had
supposed herself the chief object of his thought and care! Again,
Philip discussing her mind and character with Miss Bruce, as those of a
friend for whom he had a regard! or bestowing a passing imagination on
how she would receive the intelligence of his engagement! Perhaps he
reserved the news till he could come down to Deerbrook, and call and
tell her himself, as one whose friendship deserved that he should be the
bearer of his own tidings. That footstep, whose spring she had
strangely considered her own signal of joy, was not hers but another's.
That laugh, the recollection of which made her smile even in these
dreadful moments, was to echo in another's home. She was stripped of
all her heart's treasure, of his tones, his ways, his thoughts,--a
treasure which she had lived upon without knowing it; she was stripped
of it all--cast out--left alone--and he and all others would go on their
ways, unaware that anything had happened! Let them do so. It was hard
to bear up in solitude when self-respect was gone with all the rest; but
it must be possible to live on--no matter how--if to live on was
appointed. If not, there was death, which was better.

These thoughts were not beneath one like Margaret--one who was religious
as she. It requires time for religion to avail anything when
self-respect is utterly broken-down. A devout sufferer may surmount the
pangs of persecution at the first onset, and wrestle with bodily pain,
and calmly endure bereavement by death; but there is no power of faith
by which a woman can attain resignation under the agony of unrequited
passion otherwise than by conflict, long and terrible.

Margaret laid down at last, because her eyes were weary of seeing; and
she would fain have shut out all sounds. The occasional flicker of a
tiny blaze, however, and the fall of a cinder in the hearth, served to
lull her senses, and it was not long before she slept. But, oh, the
horrors of that sleep! The lin