e felt the blows which they inflicted on her, she
accused him in her heart of cruelty. They were very hard to bear.
There was a moment in which she was almost tempted to turn upon him
and tell him that he knew nothing of her sorrows. But she restrained
herself, and when she was alone she acknowledged to herself that he
had spoken the truth. No one has a right to go about the world as
a Niobe, damping all joys with selfish tears. What did she not owe
to her father, who had warned her so often against the evil she had
contemplated, and had then, from the first moment after the fault was
done, forgiven her the doing of it? She had at any rate learned from
her misfortunes the infinite tenderness of his heart, which in the
days of their unalloyed prosperity he had never felt the necessity of
exposing to her. So she struggled and did do something. She pressed
Lady Wharton's hand, and kissed her cousin Mary, and throwing herself
into her father's arms when they were alone, whispered to him that
she would try. "What you told me, Everett, was quite right," she said
afterwards to her brother.

"I didn't mean to be savage," he answered with a smile.

"It was quite right, and I have thought of it, and I will do my best.
I will keep it to myself if I can. It is not quite, perhaps, what you
think it is, but I will keep it to myself." She fancied that they
did not understand her, and perhaps she was right. It was not only
that he had died and left her a young widow;--nor even that his end
had been so harsh a tragedy and so foul a disgrace! It was not only
that her love had been misbestowed,--not only that she had made so
grievous an error in the one great act of her life which she had
chosen to perform on her own judgment! Perhaps the most crushing
memory of all was that which told her that she, who had through all
her youth been regarded as a bright star in the family, had been the
one person to bring a reproach upon the name of all these people who
were so good to her. How shall a person conscious of disgrace, with
a mind capable of feeling the crushing weight of personal disgrace,
move and look and speak as though that disgrace had been washed away?
But she made the struggle, and did not altogether fail.

As regarded Sir Alured, in spite of this poor widow's crape, he was
very happy at this time, and his joy did in some degree communicate
itself to the old barrister. Everett was taken round to every tenant
and introduced as the