nce,
having learned from Gilbert that history was the best thing to study.
Over these accumulating volumes she spent many a laborious hour. At
first it was very hard to keep awake much after ten o'clock; eyelids
_would_ grow so heavy, and the coil of golden hair (she no longer wore
the long plait with the blue ribbon) seemed such a burden on the brain.
But she strove with her drowsiness, and, like other students, soon made
the grand discovery that, the fit once over, one is wider awake than
ever. What hard, hard things she read! 'Tytler's Universal History,' in
one fat little small-typed volume, very much spoilt by rain, she made a
vade-mecum; the 'Annals of the Orient, of Greece, of Rome'--with
difficulty not easily estimated she worked her way through them. An
English Dictionary became a necessity; she had to wait three weeks
before she had money enough to purchase the cheapest she could find. At
the very beginning of Tytler were such terrible words: _chronological_,
and _epitome_, and _disquisitions_, and _exemplification_.

'If I had someone to ask, what time it would save me! Wouldn't _he_
help me? Wouldn't _he_ be glad to tell me what long words mean?'

Never mind, she would do it by herself. She had brains. Poor Gilbert
had so often said that she could learn anything in time. So the lamp
burned on till midnight. Compendious old Tytler! In his grave it should
have given him both joy and sorrow that so sweet a face grew paler over
his long hard words.

Had she not her reward before her? Two years; in one way it would be
all too short a time. Not an hour must be lost. And when the two years
had come full circle, and some morning she was told that someone wished
to see her, and she went down into the sitting-room, and he, he stood
before her, then she would say, 'This and this I have done, thus hard
have I striven, for your sake, because I love you better than my own
soul!'

That secret: no one must suspect it; no, not even Lyddy. After a hard
night's work she would wake up feeling yet weary, her brain dull, and a
strange pain at her heart--the pain that came so often; but, whilst her
thoughts were struggling to consciousness, she felt that there was some
joy beyond the present pain. And, behold! with sense of the new day
came ever renewed hope. She rose, and a bright angel circled her with
protecting, comforting arms. Dark or sunny, for her the morning had its
golden rays.

How near he sometimes might be to he