call of
the May cuckoo, or sharing the September treasure of nuts and ripe
blackberries--a wild dessert which it was her morning's pleasure to
collect in a little basket, and cover with green leaves and fresh
blossoms, and her afternoon's delight to administer to Moore, berry by
berry, and nut by nut, like a bird feeding its fledgling.

Robert's features and form were with her; the sound of his voice was
quite distinct in her ear; his few caresses seemed renewed. But these
joys, being hollow, were, ere long, crushed in. The pictures faded, the
voice failed, the visionary clasp melted chill from her hand, and where
the warm seal of lips had made impress on her forehead, it felt now as
if a sleety rain-drop had fallen. She returned from an enchanted region
to the real world: for Nunnely Wood in June she saw her narrow chamber;
for the songs of birds in alleys she heard the rain on her casement; for
the sigh of the south wind came the sob of the mournful east; and for
Moore's manly companionship she had the thin illusion of her own dim
shadow on the wall. Turning from the pale phantom which reflected
herself in its outline, and her reverie in the drooped attitude of its
dim head and colourless tresses, she sat down--inaction would suit the
frame of mind into which she was now declining--she said to herself, "I
have to live, perhaps, till seventy years. As far as I know, I have good
health; half a century of existence may lie before me. How am I to
occupy it? What am I to do to fill the interval of time which spreads
between me and the grave?"

She reflected.

"I shall not be married, it appears," she continued. "I suppose, as
Robert does not care for me, I shall never have a husband to love, nor
little children to take care of. Till lately I had reckoned securely on
the duties and affections of wife and mother to occupy my existence. I
considered, somehow, as a matter of course, that I was growing up to the
ordinary destiny, and never troubled myself to seek any other; but now I
perceive plainly I may have been mistaken. Probably I shall be an old
maid. I shall live to see Robert married to some one else, some rich
lady. I shall never marry. What was I created for, I wonder? Where is my
place in the world?"

She mused again.

"Ah! I see," she pursued presently; "that is the question which most old
maids are puzzled to solve. Other people solve it for them by saying,
'Your place is to do good to others, to be helpful