es, I am their Princess or their
Queen.

"Many people living here, as I am forced to do, would perhaps be
very happy, and perhaps I ought to be so. We have a beauteous valley,
sheltered from the cold of winter and power of the summer sun,
untroubled also by the storms and mists that veil the mountains;
although I must acknowledge that it is apt to rain too often. The grass
moreover is so fresh, and the brook so bright and lively, and flowers
of so many hues come after one another that no one need be dull, if only
left alone with them.

"And so in the early days perhaps, when morning breathes around me, and
the sun is going upward, and light is playing everywhere, I am not so
far beside them all as to live in shadow. But when the evening gathers
down, and the sky is spread with sadness, and the day has spent itself;
then a cloud of lonely trouble falls, like night, upon me. I cannot see
the things I quest for of a world beyond me; I cannot join the peace
and quiet of the depth above me; neither have I any pleasure in the
brightness of the stars.

"What I want to know is something none of them can tell me--what am
I, and why set here, and when shall I be with them? I see that you are
surprised a little at this my curiosity. Perhaps such questions never
spring in any wholesome spirit. But they are in the depths of mine, and
I cannot be quit of them.

"Meantime, all around me is violence and robbery, coarse delight and
savage pain, reckless joke and hopeless death. Is it any wonder that I
cannot sink with these, that I cannot so forget my soul, as to live the
life of brutes, and die the death more horrible because it dreams of
waking? There is none to lead me forward, there is none to teach me
right; young as I am, I live beneath a curse that lasts for ever."

Here Lorna broke down for awhile, and cried so very piteously, that
doubting of my knowledge, and of any power to comfort, I did my best to
hold my peace, and tried to look very cheerful. Then thinking that might
be bad manners, I went to wipe her eyes for her.

[Illustration: 162.jpg I went to wipe her eyes]

"Master Ridd," she began again, "I am both ashamed and vexed at my own
childish folly. But you, who have a mother, who thinks (you say) so
much of you, and sisters, and a quiet home; you cannot tell (it is not
likely) what a lonely nature is. How it leaps in mirth sometimes, with
only heaven touching it; and how it falls away desponding, when the
dreary