ionate heart, whose tender
look, and whose gentle monition, were ever with me--she--alas, my dear
aunt, how few know what the bitterness is--when forced to struggle
against strong but misguided wills, whether of our own or others'; to
feel that we are without a mother--that that gentle voice is silent
forever; that that well in the desert of life--a mother's heart--is
forever closed to us; that that protecting angel of our steps is
departed from us--never, never to return."

As she uttered these words in deep grief, it might have been observed,
that Lady Gourlay shed some quiet but apparently bitter tears. It is
impossible for us to enter into the heart, or its reflections; but it
is not, we think, unreasonable to suppose that while Lucy dwelt so
feelingly upon the loss of her mother, the other may have been thinking
upon that of her child.

"My dear girl," she exclaimed, "let the affectionate compact which I
have just proposed be ratified between us. My heart, at all events, has
already ratified it. I shall be as a mother to you, and you shall be to
me as a daughter."

"I know not, my dear aunt," replied Lucy, "whether to consider you more
affectionate than generous. How few of our sex, after--after--that
is, considering the enmities--in fact, how a relative, placed as you
unhappily are, would take me to her heart as you have done."

"Perhaps, my child, I were incapable of it, if that heart had never been
touched and softened by affliction. As it is, Lucy, let me say to you,
as one who probably knows the world better, do not look, as most young
persons like you do, upon the trials you are at present forced to
suffer, as if they were the sharpest and heaviest in the world. Time, my
love, and perhaps other trials of a still severer character, may one day
teach you to think that your grief and impatience were out of proportion
to what you then underwent. May He who afflicts his people for their
good, prevent that this ever should be so in your case; but, even if
it should, remember that God loveth whom he chasteneth. And above all
things, my dear child, never, never, never despair in his providence.
Dry your eyes, my love," she added, with a smile of affection and
encouragement, that Lucy felt to be contagious by its cheering
influence upon her; "dry your tears, and turn round to the light until
I contemplate more clearly and distinctly that beauty of which I have
heard so much."

Lucy obeyed her with all the simpli