omething of the renovating influence of a beautiful nature was
needed by the daughter of Gerard. She was at this moment anxious
and dispirited. The outbreak at Birmingham, the conviction that such
proceedings must ultimately prove fatal to the cause to which she
was devoted, the dark apprehension that her father was in some manner
implicated in this movement, that had commenced with so much public
disaster, and which menaced consequences still more awful, all these
events, and fears, and sad forebodings, acted with immense influence
on a temperament which, though gifted with even a sublime courage,
was singularly sensitive. The quick and teeming imagination of Sybil
conjured up a thousand fears which were in some degree unfounded, in a
great degree exaggerated, but this is the inevitable lot of the creative
mind practising on the inexperienced.

The shock too had been sudden. The two months that had elapsed since she
had parted, as she supposed for ever, from Egremont, while they had not
less abounded than the preceding time in that pleasing public excitement
which her father's career, in her estimation alike useful, honourable,
and distinguished, occasioned her, had been fruitful in some sources of
satisfaction of a softer and more domestic character. The acquaintance
of Hatton, of whom they saw a great deal, had very much contributed to
the increased amenity of her life. He was a most agreeable, instructive,
and obliging companion; who seemed peculiarly to possess the art of
making life pleasant by the adroit management of unobtrusive resources.
He lent Sybil books; and all that he recommended to her notice, were of
a kind that harmonized with her sentiment and taste. He furnished her
from his library with splendid works of art, illustrative of those
periods of our history and those choice and costly edifices which were
associated with her fondest thought and fancy. He placed in her room the
best periodical literature of the day, which for her was a new world;
he furnished her with newspapers whose columns of discussion taught her,
that the opinions she had embraced were not unquestioned: as she had
never seen a journal in her life before, except a stray number of the
"Mowbray Phalanx," or the metropolitan publication which was devoted
to the cause of the National Convention, and reported her father's
speeches, the effect of this reading on her intelligence was, to say the
least, suggestive.

Many a morning too when