ice to the daughter's heart; they suggested the conclusion that it was
perhaps better never to know her parent than to know her and not like
her.

But one project could she frame whose execution seemed likely to bring
her a hope of relief: it was to take a situation, to be a governess; she
could do nothing else. A little incident brought her to the point, when
she found courage to break her design to her uncle.

Her long and late walks lay always, as has been said, on lonely roads;
but in whatever direction she had rambled--whether along the drear
skirts of Stilbro' Moor or over the sunny stretch of Nunnely Common--her
homeward path was still so contrived as to lead her near the Hollow. She
rarely descended the den, but she visited its brink at twilight almost
as regularly as the stars rose over the hillcrests. Her resting-place
was at a certain stile under a certain old thorn. Thence she could look
down on the cottage, the mill, the dewy garden-ground, the still, deep
dam; thence was visible the well-known counting-house window, from whose
panes at a fixed hour shot, suddenly bright, the ray of the well-known
lamp. Her errand was to watch for this ray, her reward to catch it,
sometimes sparkling bright in clear air, sometimes shimmering dim
through mist, and anon flashing broken between slant lines of rain--for
she came in all weathers.

There were nights when it failed to appear. She knew then that Robert
was from home, and went away doubly sad; whereas its kindling rendered
her elate, as though she saw in it the promise of some indefinite hope.
If, while she gazed, a shadow bent between the light and lattice, her
heart leaped. That eclipse was Robert; she had seen him. She would
return home comforted, carrying in her mind a clearer vision of his
aspect, a distincter recollection of his voice, his smile, his bearing;
and blent with these impressions was often a sweet persuasion that, if
she could get near him, his heart might welcome her presence yet, that
at this moment he might be willing to extend his hand and draw her to
him, and shelter her at his side as he used to do. That night, though
she might weep as usual, she would fancy her tears less scalding; the
pillow they watered seemed a little softer; the temples pressed to that
pillow ached less.

The shortest path from the Hollow to the rectory wound near a certain
mansion, the same under whose lone walls Malone passed on that
night-journey mentioned in an