she had hoped. That was all
she told me of herself. The rest referred to me.

She gave me no advice; she urged no duty on me; she only told me, in her
own fervent manner, what her trust in me was. She knew (she said) how
such a nature as mine would turn affliction to good. She knew how trial
and emotion would exalt and strengthen it. She was sure that in my every
purpose I should gain a firmer and a higher tendency, through the grief
I had undergone. She, who so gloried in my fame, and so looked forward
to its augmentation, well knew that I would labour on. She knew that in
me, sorrow could not be weakness, but must be strength. As the endurance
of my childish days had done its part to make me what I was, so greater
calamities would nerve me on, to be yet better than I was; and so, as
they had taught me, would I teach others. She commended me to God, who
had taken my innocent darling to His rest; and in her sisterly affection
cherished me always, and was always at my side go where I would; proud
of what I had done, but infinitely prouder yet of what I was reserved to
do.

I put the letter in my breast, and thought what had I been an hour ago!
When I heard the voices die away, and saw the quiet evening cloud grow
dim, and all the colours in the valley fade, and the golden snow upon
the mountain-tops become a remote part of the pale night sky, yet felt
that the night was passing from my mind, and all its shadows clearing,
there was no name for the love I bore her, dearer to me, henceforward,
than ever until then.

I read her letter many times. I wrote to her before I slept. I told her
that I had been in sore need of her help; that without her I was not,
and I never had been, what she thought me; but that she inspired me to
be that, and I would try.

I did try. In three months more, a year would have passed since the
beginning of my sorrow. I determined to make no resolutions until the
expiration of those three months, but to try. I lived in that valley,
and its neighbourhood, all the time.

The three months gone, I resolved to remain away from home for some
time longer; to settle myself for the present in Switzerland, which was
growing dear to me in the remembrance of that evening; to resume my pen;
to work.

I resorted humbly whither Agnes had commended me; I sought out Nature,
never sought in vain; and I admitted to my breast the human interest
I had lately shrunk from. It was not long, before I had almost as ma