and Lily worked harder than either her mother or
her sister. In truth she was hardly an invalid any longer, and would
not submit to an invalid's treatment. She felt herself that, for the
present, constant occupation could alone save her from the misery of
looking back,--and she had conceived an idea that the harder that
occupation was, the better it would be for her. While pulling down
the books, and folding the linen, and turning out from their old
hiding-places the small long-forgotten properties of the household,
she would be as gay as ever she had been in old times. She would talk
over her work, standing with flushed cheek and laughing eyes among
the dusty ruins around her, till for a moment her mother would think
that all was well within her. But then at other moments, when the
reaction came, it would seem as though nothing were well. She could
not sit quietly over the fire, with quiet rational work in her
hands, and chat in a rational quiet way. Not as yet could she do so.
Nevertheless it was well with her,--within her own bosom. She had
declared to herself that she would conquer her misery,--as she had
also declared to herself during her illness that her misfortune
should not kill her,--and she was in the way to conquer it. She told
herself that the world was not over for her because her sweet hopes
had been frustrated. The wound had been deep and very sore, but the
flesh of the patient had been sound and healthy, and her blood pure.
A physician having knowledge in such cases would have declared, after
long watching of her symptoms, that a cure was probable. Her mother
was the physician who watched her with the closest eyes; and she,
though she was sometimes driven to doubt, did hope, with stronger
hope from day to day, that her child might live to remember the story
of her love without abiding agony.

That nobody should talk to her about it,--that had been the one
stipulation which she had seemed to make, not sending forth a request
to that effect among her friends in so many words, but showing by
certain signs that such was her stipulation. A word to that effect
she had spoken to her uncle,--as may be remembered, which word had
been regarded with the closest obedience. She had gone out into
her little world very soon after the news of Crosbie's falsehood
had reached her,--first to church and then among the people of the
village, resolving to carry herself as though no crushing weight had
fallen upon her. The v