pauses and listens, with her finger half-raised to her
lip, as amidst that careless jubilee of birds she hears a note more
grave and sustained,--the nightingale singing by day (as sometimes,
though rarely, he is heard,--perhaps because he misses his mate; perhaps
because he sees from his bower the creeping form of some foe to his
race),--see, as she listens now to that plaintive, low-chanted warble,
how quickly the smile is sobered, how the shade, soft and pensive,
steals over the brow. It is but the mystic sympathy with Nature that
bestows the smile or the shade. In that heart lightly moved beats the
fine sense of the poet. It is the exquisite sensibility of the nerves
that sends its blithe play to those spirits, and from the clearness of
the atmosphere comes, warm and ethereal, the ray of that light.

And does the roof of the pastor give shelter to Helen Mainwaring's
youth? Has Death taken from her the natural protectors? Those forms
which we saw so full of youth and youth's heart in that very spot, has
the grave closed on them yet? Yet! How few attain to the age of the
Psalmist! Twenty-seven years have passed since that date: how often, in
those years, have the dark doors opened for the young as for the old!
William Mainwaring died first, careworn and shamebowed; the blot on his
name had cankered into his heart. Susan's life, always precarious, had
struggled on, while he lived, by the strong power of affection and will;
she would not die, for who then could console him? But at his death the
power gave way. She lingered, but lingered dyingly, for three years; and
then, for the first time since William's death, she smiled: that smile
remained on the lips of the corpse. They had had many trials, that young
couple whom we left so prosperous and happy. Not till many years after
their marriage had one sweet consoler been born to them. In the season
of poverty and shame and grief it came; and there was no pride on
Mainwaring's brow when they placed his first-born in his arms. By her
will, the widow consigned Helen to the joint guardianship of Mr. Fielden
and her sister; but the latter was abroad, her address unknown, so
the vicar for two years had had sole charge of the orphan. She was not
unprovided for. The sum that Susan brought to her husband had been long
since gone, it is true,--lost in the calamity which had wrecked William
Mainwaring's name and blighted his prospects; but Helen's grandfather,
the landagent, had died