she had always known
from Hilda. Never more should she possess one devoted friend--the
true and tried friend of a life--to whom she might go in any sorrow,
and know and feel that she would receive the sympathy of love and the
counsel of wisdom. Nevermore--no, nevermore! Such was the refrain
that seemed constantly to ring in her ears, and she found herself
murmuring those despairing lines of Poe, where the solitary word of
the Raven seems

"Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore--
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of 'Never--nevermore!'"

It was awful to her to be, for the first time in her life, alone in
the world. Hitherto, amidst her bitterest afflictions, she had always
had some one whom she loved. After her father's death she had Lord
Chetwynde and Mrs. Hart; and with these she always had Hilda. But now
all were gone, and Hilda was gone. To a passionate and intense nature
like hers, sorrow was capable of giving pangs which are unknown to
colder hearts, and so she suffered to a degree which was commensurate
with her ardent temperament.

Weeks passed on. Recovering from the first shock, she sank into a
state of dreamy listlessness, which, however, was at times
interrupted by some wild hopes which would intrude in spite of
herself. These hopes were that Hilda, after all, might not be lost.
She might have been found by some one and carried off somewhere. Wild
enough were these hopes, and Zillah saw this plainly, yet still they
would intrude. Yet, far from proving a solace, they only made her
situation worse, since they kept her in a state of constant
suspense--a suspense, too, which had no shadow of a foundation in
reason. So, alone, and struggling with the darkest despair, Zillah
passed the time, without having sufficient energy of mind left to
think about her future, or the state of her affairs.

As to her affairs--she was nothing better than a child. She had a
vague idea that she was rich; but she had no idea of where her money
might be. She knew the names of her London agents; but whether they
held any funds of hers or not, she could not tell. She took it for
granted that they did. Child as she was, she did not know even the
common mode of drawing a check. Hilda had done that for her since her
flight from Chetwynde.

The news of the unhappy fate of the elder