ly, her passion for admiration even in trifles,
were well known to her; and while, perhaps, these very failings, like
traits of childish temperament, had actually endeared her the more
to Nelly, she could not but dread their effect when they came to be
exercised in the world of strangers.

Not that Nelly could form the very vaguest conception of what that world
was like. Its measures and its perils, its engagements and hazards,
were all unknown to her. It had never been even the dream-land of
her imagination. Too humble in spirit, too lowly by nature, to feel
companionship with the great and titled, she had associated all
her thoughts with those whose life is labor; with them were all her
sympathies. There was a simple beauty in the unchanging fortune of the
peasant's life such as she had seen in the Schwarzwald, for instance
that captivated her. That peaceful domesticity was the very nearest
approach to happiness, to her thinking, and she longed for the day when
her father might consent to the obscurity and solitude of some nameless
"Dorf" in the dark recesses of that old forest. With Frank and Kate,
such a lot would have been a paradise. But one was already gone, and she
was now to lose the other too. "Strange turn of fortune," as she said,
"that prosperity should be more cruel than adversity. In our days of
friendless want and necessity we held together; it is only when the
promise of brighter destinies is dawning that we separate. It is but
selfishness after all," thought she, "to wish for an existence like
this; such humble and lowly fortunes might naturally enough become 'lame
Nelly,' but Frank, the high-hearted, daring youth, with ambitious hopes
and soaring aspirations, demands another and a different sphere of
action; and Kate, whose attractions would grace a court, might well
sorrow over a lot of such ignoble obscurity. What would not my sorrow
and self-reproach be if I saw that, in submitting to the same monotony
of this quietude, they should have become wearied and careless, neither
taking pleasure in the simple pastimes of the people, nor stooping to
their companionship! And thus all may be for the best," said she, half
aloud, "if I could but feel courage to think so. We may each of us be
but following his true road in life."

A long intimacy with affliction will very frequently be found to impress
even a religiously-disposed mind with a strong tinge of fatalism. The
apparent hopelessness of all effort to