ayed the feelings of her own sex,--

"We make
A ladder of our thoughts where angels step,
But sleep ourselves at the foot!"
[The History of the Lyre, by L. E. L.]

Before Clifford had last seen her, we have observed that Lucy had (and
it was a consolation) clung to the belief that, despite of appearances
and his own confession, his past life had not been such as to place him
without the pale of her just affections; and there were frequent moments
when, remembering that the death of her father had removed the only
being who could assert an unanswerable claim to the dictation of her
actions, she thought that Clifford, hearing her hand was utterly at her
own disposal, might again appear, and again urge a suit which he felt so
few circumstances could induce her to deny. All this half-acknowledged
yet earnest train of reasoning and hope vanished from the moment he had
quitted her uncle's house. His words bore no misinterpretation. He had
not yielded even to her own condescension, and her cheek burned as she
recalled it. Yet he loved her. She saw, she knew it in his every word
and look! Bitter, then, and dark must be that remorse which could have
conquered every argument but that which urged him to leave her, when he
might have claimed her forever. True, that when his letter formally bade
her farewell, the same self-accusing language was recurred to, the same
dark hints and allusions to infamy or guilt; yet never till now had she
interpreted them rigidly, and never till now had she dreamed how far
their meaning could extend. Still, what crimes could he have committed?
The true ones never occurred to Lucy. She shuddered to ask herself, and
hushed her doubts in a gloomy and torpid silence. But through all her
accusations against herself, and through all her awakened suspicions
against Clifford, she could not but acknowledge that something noble
and not unworthy of her mingled in his conduct, and occasioned his
resistance to her and to himself; and this belief, perhaps, irritated
even while it touched her, and kept her feelings in a perpetual struggle
and conflict which her delicate frame and soft mind were little able to
endure. When the nerves once break, how breaks the character with them!
How many ascetics, withered and soured, do we meet in the world, who
but for one shock to the heart and form might have erred on the side of