forget. They remember the time when all was well,--the sweet childhood,
the blooming youth, the first love, the halcyon days before trouble
came.

Lady Markland had felt this universal influence. But when she showed her
husband's portrait to Mrs. Warrender, it was not so much with a renewal
of love as with a great anguish of pity that her mind was filled. This
for a time veiled even in her mind the relief, which was not altogether
to be ignored even then, but which gradually gained upon her, yet still
with great gravity and pain. She was free from a bondage which had
become intolerable to her, which day by day she had felt herself less
able to bear; but this gain was at his cost. To gain anything at the
cost of another is painful to a generous mind; but to gain at such a
price,--the price as seemed not only of another's life, but of a life to
which it had seemed almost impossible that there could be any harmonious
completion or extension! For what could he do in another world, in a
world of spirits? He had been all fleshly; nothing in him that was not
of the earth. In the majority of cases it is a hard thing to understand
how a spirit, formed apparently for nothing but the uses of earth, should
be able to adapt itself in a moment to those occupations and interests
which are congenial to another state of existence; and with young Lord
Markland this was peculiarly the case. He had seemed to care for nothing
except things which he could not carry with him into the unseen. Had
other capacities, other desires, developed in a moment into the new
life? This is a question which no one could answer, and his wife could
only think of him as he had been. There seemed nothing but suffering,
deprivation, for him, in such a change. The wind, when it blew wildly of
nights, seemed to her like the moan of a wandering spirit trying vainly
to get back to the world which it understood, to the pleasures of which it
was capable. And had she bought relief and freedom by such a sacrifice
exacted from another? When comforters bid her believe that he had gone
to a better place, that it was her loss but his gain,--which in all
probability is true in all cases, not only in those of the saints whose
natural home is heaven,--her heart rose against them, and contradicted
them, though she said nothing. It was--alas that it should be so!--her
gain. She dared not, even to herself, deny that; but how could it be
his--a man who had no thought but of the beg