" said the sage, "I feel, for the first time for years, the
distinction of the seasons. I feel that we are walking in the pleasant
spring. Young days come back to me like dreams; and I could almost think
thy mother were once more by my side!"

Sibyll pressed her father's hand, and a soft but melancholy sigh stirred
her rosy lips. She, too, felt the balm of the young year; yet her
father's words broke upon sad and anxious musings. Not to youth as to
age, not to loving fancy as to baffled wisdom, has seclusion charms that
compensate for the passionate and active world! On coming back to the
old house, on glancing round its mildewed walls, comfortless and bare,
the neglected, weed-grown garden, Sibyll had shuddered in dismay. Had
her ambition fallen again into its old abject state? Were all her hopes
to restore her ancestral fortunes, to vindicate her dear father's fame,
shrunk into this slough of actual poverty,--the butterfly's wings folded
back into the chrysalis shroud of torpor? The vast disparity between
herself and Hastings had not struck her so forcibly at the court; here,
at home, the very walls proclaimed it. When Edward had dismissed the
unwelcome witnesses of his attempted crime, he had given orders that
they should be conducted to their house through the most private ways.
He naturally desired to create no curious comment upon their departure.
Unperceived by their neighbours, Sibyll and her father had gained access
by the garden gate. Old Madge received them in dismay; for she had been
in the habit of visiting Sibyll weekly at the palace, and had gained,
in the old familiarity subsisting, then, between maiden and nurse, some
insight into her heart. She had cherished the fondest hopes for the fate
of her young mistress; and now, to labour and to penury had the fate
returned! The guard who accompanied them, according to Edward's orders,
left some pieces of gold, which Adam rejected, but Madge secretly
received and judiciously expended. And this was all their wealth. But
not of toil nor of penury in themselves thought Sibyll; she thought
but of Hastings,--wildly, passionately, trustfully, unceasingly, of the
absent Hastings. Oh, he would seek her, he would come, her reverse would
but the more endear her to him! Hastings came not. She soon learned the
wherefore. War threatened the land,--he was at his post, at the head of
armies.

Oh, with what panoply of prayer she sought to shield that beloved
breast! And now t