be no possible
opportunity for the telling of her own love-story. Emily herself
appeared to have forgotten it in the midst of her own misery, and had
not mentioned Hugh Stanbury's name since they had been in Manchester
Street. We have all felt how on occasions our own hopes and fears,
nay, almost our own individuality, become absorbed in and obliterated
by the more pressing cares and louder voices of those around us. Nora
hardly dared to allude to herself while her sister's grief was still
so prominent, and while her father was daily complaining of his own
personal annoyances at the Colonial Office. It seemed to her that at
such a moment she could not introduce a new matter for dispute, and
perhaps a new subject of dismay.

Nevertheless, as the days passed by, and as she saw nothing of Hugh
Stanbury, her heart became sore and her spirit vexed. It seemed to
her that if she were now deserted by him, all the world would be
over for her. The Glascock episode in her life had passed by,--that
episode which might have been her history, which might have been a
history so prosperous, so magnificent, and probably so happy. As she
thought of herself and of circumstances as they had happened to her,
of the resolutions which she had made as to her own career when she
first came to London, and of the way in which she had thrown all
those resolutions away in spite of the wonderful success which had
come in her path, she could not refrain from thinking that she had
brought herself to shipwreck by her own indecision. It must not be
imagined that she regretted what she had done. She knew very well
that to have acted otherwise than she did when Mr. Glascock came
to her at Nuncombe Putney would have proved her to be heartless,
selfish, and unwomanly. Long before that time she had determined that
it was her duty to marry a rich man,--and, if possible, a man in
high position. Such a one had come to her,--one endowed with all the
good things of the world beyond her most sanguine expectation,--and
she had rejected him! She knew that she had been right because she
had allowed herself to love the other man. She did not repent what
she had done, the circumstances being as they were, but she almost
regretted that she had been so soft in heart, so susceptible of the
weakness of love, so little able to do as she pleased with herself.
Of what use to her was it that she loved this man with all her
strength of affection when he never came to her, alth