the absence of sunshine made every
object we passed appear less attractive than the impression
which my memory had retained.

Sir Walter Scott remarks, in one of his novels, that good
humour gives to a plain face the same charm as sunshine lends
to an ugly country. I agreed entirely with him, as I looked
first on Salisbury Plain, without one gleam to diversify its
gloomy extent, and then on Mrs. Swift's unmeaning face, the
stern rigidity of which never relaxed into a smile, and
contrasted it with the cheerful light of dear Mrs. Hatton's
radiant, though certainly not beautiful features.

I had much to think about, but I found it difficult to define
and collect my ideas. Henry and I had parted in anger, and it
was almost with a curse on his lips that he had taken leave of
me. He, too, knew my secret; he, too, used that knowledge to
threaten and terrify me. Had Edward betrayed it to him, since
he left England? or was it he who had denounced me to Edward?
Alas! it mattered little which it was. I was stunned, I felt
as if one by one all those whom I cared for would upbraid and
forsake me. A dreadful recollection remained on my mind of
something which Henry had said in that last conversation, of
Julia's death having been a great worldly advantage to me, and
of my uncle having settled his fortune upon me. My blood ran
cold at the thought--a marriage with Edward was the condition
annexed. The Exile's dream of the home to which he can never
return, the Desert Traveller's vision of water which he can
never approach, are to them what to me were those words,--a
marriage with Edward. Something which in the shadowy dreams of
girlhood had hovered in my fancy; something which the terrors
and the trials of the last year had crushed and subdued;
something which in the feverish excitement of the last months
had been dimmed but not destroyed; something which survived
hope, and rose again in the silence of the soul when the
restless stimulus of outward excitements failed. But it could
never be! How could I ever stand in the place of that wretched
child whose image would rise between me and the altar if ever
I ventured to approach it, as my uncle's heiress, as Edward's
bride? _His_ Bride! The very sight of me had rendered Elmsley
insupportable to him; the knowledge of my guilt (for guilty I
was, though guiltless of the dreadful consequences of my
ungovernable impetuosity) had driven him from England. Was he
not Julia's cousin? Was not