rest and nearest friends; and she sat down, almost frightened at
her own heartlessness, in that she was allowing herself to be happy
at such a time. Her aunt had been carried away to her grave only
yesterday, and her brother's death had occurred under circumstances
of peculiar distress within the year;--and yet she was happy,
triumphant,--almost lost in the joy of her own position! She remained
for a while in her chair, with her black dress hanging across her
lap, as she argued with herself as to her own state of mind. Was it
a sign of a hard heart within her, that she could be happy at such
a time? Ought the memory of her poor brother to have such an effect
upon her as to make any joy of spirits impossible to her? Should she
at the present moment be so crushed by her aunt's demise, as to be
incapable of congratulating herself upon her own success? Should
she have told him, when he asked her that question upon the bridge,
that there could be no marrying or giving in marriage between them,
no talking on such a subject in days so full of sorrow as these?
I do not know that she quite succeeded in recognising it as a
truth that sorrow should be allowed to bar out no joy that it does
not bar out of absolute necessity,--by its own weight, without
reference to conventional ideas; that sorrow should never, under any
circumstances, be nursed into activity, as though it were a thing in
itself divine or praiseworthy. I do not know that she followed out
her arguments till she had taught herself that it is the Love that is
divine,--the Love which, when outraged by death or other severance,
produces that sorrow which man would control if he were strong
enough, but which he cannot control by reason of the weakness of
his humanity. I doubt whether so much as this made itself plain
to her, as she sat there before her toilet table, with her sombre
dress hanging from her hands on to the ground. But something of the
strength of such reasoning was hers. Knowing herself to be full of
joy, she would not struggle to make herself believe that it behoved
her to be unhappy. She told herself that she was doing what was good
for others as well as for herself;--what would be very good for her
father, and what should be good, if it might be within her power to
make it so, for him who was to be her husband. The blackness of the
cloud of her brother's death would never altogether pass away from
her. It had tended, as she knew well, to make her serious,