it; it will lift you out of earth's
clay and earth's evil with its angel wings; but trust not to its
remaining: even while you are saying, "I will make it mine for ever," it
is gone. It had gone for Lucy Tempest. And, oh! better for her, perhaps,
that it should go; better, perhaps, for all; for if that sweet glimpse
of paradise could take up its abode permanently in the heart, we should
never look, or wish, or pray for that better paradise which has to come
hereafter.

But who can see this in the sharp flood tide of despair? Not Lucy. In
losing Lionel she has lost all; and nothing remained for her but to do
battle with her trouble alone. Passionately and truly as Lionel had
loved Sibylla; so, in her turn, did Lucy love him.

It is not the fashion now for young ladies to die of broken hearts--as
it was in the old days. A little while given to "the grief that kills,"
and then Lucy strove to arouse herself to better things. She would go
upon her way, burying all feelings within her; she would meet him and
others with a calm exterior and placid smile; none should see that she
suffered; no, though her heart were breaking.

"I will forget him," she murmured to herself ten times in the day. "What
a mercy that I did not let him see I loved him! I never should have
loved him, but that I thought he--Psha! why do I recall it? I was
mistaken; I was stupid--and all that's left to me is to make the best of
it."

So she drove her thoughts away, as Lionel did. She set out on her course
bravely, with the determination to forget him. She schooled her heart,
and schooled her face, and believed she was doing great things. To
Lionel she cast no blame--and that was unfortunate for the forgetting
scheme. She blamed herself; not Lionel. Remarkably simple and
humble-minded, Lucy Tempest was accustomed to think of every one before
herself. Who was she, that she should have assumed Lionel Verner was
growing to love her? Sometimes she would glance at another phase of the
picture: That Lionel _had_ been growing to love her; but that Sibylla
Massingbird had, in some weak moment, by some sleight of hand, drawn him
to her again, extracted from him a promise that he could not retract.
She did not dwell upon this; she drove it from her, as she drove away,
or strove to drive away, the other thoughts; although the theory,
regarding the night of Sibylla's return, was the favourite theory of
Lady Verner. Altogether, I say, circumstances were not very f