and light is playing everywhere, I am not so
far beside them all as to live in shadow. But when the evening gathers
down, and the sky is spread with sadness, and the day has spent itself;
then a cloud of lonely trouble falls, like night, upon me. I cannot see
the things I quest for of a world beyond me; I cannot join the peace
and quiet of the depth above me; neither have I any pleasure in the
brightness of the stars.

'What I want to know is something none of them can tell me--what am
I, and why set here, and when shall I be with them? I see that you are
surprised a little at this my curiosity. Perhaps such questions never
spring in any wholesome spirit. But they are in the depths of mine, and
I cannot be quit of them.

'Meantime, all around me is violence and robbery, coarse delight and
savage pain, reckless joke and hopeless death. Is it any wonder that I
cannot sink with these, that I cannot so forget my soul, as to live the
life of brutes, and die the death more horrible because it dreams of
waking? There is none to lead me forward, there is none to teach me
right; young as I am, I live beneath a curse that lasts for ever.'

Here Lorna broke down for awhile, and cried so very piteously, that
doubting of my knowledge, and of any power to comfort, I did my best to
hold my peace, and tried to look very cheerful. Then thinking that might
be bad manners, I went to wipe her eyes for her.

'Master Ridd,' she began again, 'I am both ashamed and vexed at my own
childish folly. But you, who have a mother, who thinks (you say) so
much of you, and sisters, and a quiet home; you cannot tell (it is not
likely) what a lonely nature is. How it leaps in mirth sometimes, with
only heaven touching it; and how it falls away desponding, when the
dreary weight creeps on.

'It does not happen many times that I give way like this; more shame
now to do so, when I ought to entertain you. Sometimes I am so full of
anger, that I dare not trust to speech, at things they cannot hide from
me; and perhaps you would be much surprised that reckless men would care
so much to elude a young girl's knowledge. They used to boast to Aunt
Sabina of pillage and of cruelty, on purpose to enrage her; but they
never boast to me. It even makes me smile sometimes to see how
awkwardly they come and offer for temptation to me shining packets,
half concealed, of ornaments and finery, of rings, or chains, or jewels,
lately belonging to other people.

'But w