othing is
hard, even when you are accustomed to it; and though she knew that they
would not hear her, what could she do but cry out to them as she stood
there unregarded? "Oh, have pity upon me!" Lady Mary said; and the pang
in her heart was so great that the very atmosphere was stirred, and the
air could scarcely contain her and the passion of her endeavor to make
herself known, but thrilled like a harp-string to her cry. Mrs. Bowyer
heard the jar and tingle in the inanimate world, but she thought only
that it was some charitable visitor who had come in, and gone softly away
again at the sound of tears.
And if Lady Mary could not make herself known to the poor cottagers who
had loved her, or to the women who wept for her loss while they blamed
her, how was she to reveal herself and her secret to the men who, if they
had seen her, would have thought her an hallucination? Yes, she tried
all, and even went a long journey over land and sea to visit the earl,
who was her heir, and awake in him an interest in her child. And she
lingered about all these people in the silence of the night, and tried to
move them in dreams, since she could not move them waking. It is more
easy for one who is no more of this world, to be seen and heard in sleep;
for then those who are still in the flesh stand on the borders of the
unseen, and see and hear things which, waking, they do not understand.
But, alas! when they woke, this poor wanderer discovered that her friends
remembered no more what she had said to them in their dreams.
Presently, however, when she found Mary established in her old home, in
her old room, there came to her a new hope. For there is nothing in the
world so hard to believe, or to be convinced of, as that no effort, no
device, will ever make you known and visible to those you love. Lady Mary
being little altered in her character, though so much in her being, still
believed that if she could but find the way, in a moment,--in the
twinkling of an eye, all would be revealed and understood. She went to
Mary's room with this new hope strong in her heart. When they were alone
together in that nest of comfort which she had herself made beautiful for
her child,--two hearts so full of thought for each other,--what was there
in earthly bonds which could prevent them from meeting? She went into the
silent room, which was so familiar and dear, and waited like a mother
long separated from her child, with a faint doubt trembling on
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