wing up
her small proud head, with a brave smile, "and the knowledge makes me
more courageous. I feel so strong to do, so determined to vanquish all
obstacles, that I know I shall neither break down nor fail."

"I trust not, my dear; I trust not. You have my best wishes, at least."

"Thank you," says Molly, pressing his kind old hand.

CHAPTER XXIX.

"I fain would follow love, if that could be."

--Tennyson.

Letitia in her widowed garments looks particularly handsome. All the
"trappings and the signs" of woe suit well her tall, full figure, her
fair and placid face.

Molly looks taller, slenderer than usual in her mourning robes. She is
one of those who grow slight quickly under affliction. Her rounded
cheeks have fallen in and show sad hollows; her eyes are larger,
darker, and show beneath them great purple lines born of many tears.

She has not seen Luttrell since her return home,--although Letitia
has,--and rarely asks for him. Her absorbing grief appears to have
swallowed up all other emotions. She has not once left the house. She
works little, she does not read at all; she is fast falling into a
settled melancholy.

"Molly," says Letitia, "Tedcastle is in the drawing-room. He
particularly asks to see you. Do not refuse him again. Even though your
engagement, as you say, is at an end, still remember, dearest, how
kind, how more than thoughtful, he has been in many ways since--of
late----"

Her voice breaks.

"Yes, yes, I will see him," Molly says, wearily, and, rising, wends her
way slowly, reluctantly, to the room which contains her lover.

At sight of him some chords that have lain hushed and forgotten in her
heart for many days come to life again. Her pulses throb, albeit
languidly, her color deepens; a something that is almost gladness
awakes within her. Alas! how human are we all, how short-lived our
keenest regrets! With the living love so near her she for the first
time (though only for a moment) forgets the dead one.

In her trailing, sombre dress, with her sorrowful white cheeks, and
quivering lips, she goes up to him and places her hand in his; while
he, touched with a mighty compassion, stares at her, marking with a
lover's careful eye all the many alterations in her face. So much havoc
in so short a time!

"How changed you are! How you must have suffered!" he says, tenderly.

"I have," she answers; and then, grown nervous, because of her trouble
and the fl