t they did not know the love he bore to their daughter. But if
this was a satisfaction to Effie, in so far as it relieved her heart of
a burden, it brought to her a burden of another kind. The mother soon
saw how matters stood with the heart of Lindsay, and she, moreover, saw
that her or her daughter's gratitude could not be complete so long as he
was denied the boon of being allowed to marry the girl he had saved from
the gallows, and she waited her opportunity of breaking the delicate
subject to Effie. It was not time yet, when Effie was an invalid, and
even so far wasted and worn as to cause apprehensions of her ultimate
fate, even death; nor perhaps would that time ever come when she could
bear to hear the appeal without pain; for though Stormonth had ruined
her character and her peace of mind--nay, had left her in circumstances
almost unprecedented for treachery, baseness, and cruelty--he retained
still the niche where the offerings of a first love had been made: his
image had been indeed burned into the virgin heart, and no other form of
man's face, though representing the possessor of beauty, wealth, and
worldly honours, would ever take away that treasured symbol. It haunted
her even as a shadow of herself, which, disappearing at sundown, comes
again at the rising of the noon; nay, she would have been contented to
make other sacrifices equally great as that which she had made; nor wild
moors, nor streams, nor rugged hills, would have stopped her in an
effort to look upon him once more, and replace that inevitable image by
the real vision, which had first taken captive her young heart.

But time passed, bringing the usual ameliorations to the miserable.
Effie got so far better in health that she became able to resume, in a
languid way, her former duties, with the exception of those of "the
gentle clerk"--for of these she had had enough; even the very look of a
bank-draft brought a shudder over her; nor would she have entered the
Bank of Scotland again, even with a good cheque for a thousand pounds,
to have been all her own. Meanwhile the patient George had plied a suit
which he could only express by his eyes or the attentions of one who
worships, but he never alluded, even in their conversations, to the old
sacrifice. The mother too, and not less the father, saw the advantages
that might result as well to the health of her mind as that of her body.
They had waited--a vain waiting--for the wearing out of the traces o