g, The
doctor, indeed, had ordered carriage exercise essentially necessary; and
Lucy being none of those weak and foolish girls, who sink under illness
and calamity by an apathetic neglect of their health, or a criminal
indifference to the means of guarding and prolonging the existence into
which God has called them, left nothing undone on her part to second the
efforts of the physician. Accordingly, whenever she was able to be up,
or the weather permitted it, she sat in the carriage for an hour or two
as it drove through some of the beautiful suburban scenery by which our
city is surrounded.

The stranger, on the door being opened, was told by a servant, through
mistake, that Sir Thomas Gourlay was within. The man then showed him
to the drawing-room, where he said there was none but Miss Gourlay, he
believed, who was waiting for the carriage to take her airing.

On hearing this piece of intelligence the stranger's heart began to
palpitate, and his whole system, physical and spiritual, was disturbed
by a general commotion that mounted to pain, and almost banished his
presence of mind for the moment. He tapped at the drawing-room door, and
a low, melancholy voice, that penetrated his heart, said, "Come in." He
entered, and there on a sofa sat Lucy before him. He did not bow--his
heart was too deeply interested in her fate to remember the formalities
of ceremony--but he stood, and fixed his eyes upon her with a long and
anxious gaze. There she sat; but, oh! how much changed in appearance
from what he had known her on every previous interview. Not that
the change, whilst it spoke of sorrow and suffering, was one which
diminished her beauty; on the contrary, it had only changed its
character to something far more touching and impressive than health
itself with all its blooming hues could have bestowed. Her features were
certainly thinner, but there was visible in them a serene but mournful
spirit--a voluptuous languor, heightened and spiritualized by purity and
intellect into an expression that realized our notions rather of angelic
beauty than of the loveliness of mere woman. To all this, sorrow
had added a dignity so full of melancholy and commanding grace--a
seriousness indicative of such truth and honor--as to make the heart
of the spectator wonder, and the eye almost to weep on witnessing an
association so strange and incomprehensible, as that of such beauty and
evident goodness with sufferings that seem rather like c