haste before: and yet it seemed an age before she gained her little chamber; once there, she flung herself on her bed, and gave way to the sorrow with which she no longer struggled. Who among you has not felt the relief that it is, after constraint on some overwhelming misery, to reach the loneliness of your own room, and there yield to the passionate weeping you cannot repress? Ethel, was very young, and unaccustomed to grief; her feelings were in all their first freshness; and to such, forgetfulness seems impossible: but the body sinks under the mind, and nature can endure but a portion of suffering. Ethel cried like a child; and, like a child, cried herself to sleep.
There was a strange contrast between that cheerful chamber and its occupant. Every thing around denoted quiet, comfort, and glad and innocent tastes: the walls were of white wainscot, and hung with drawings; bookshelves fastened with rose-coloured riband, and in two recesses were stands of old china, where shepherds, shepherdesses, and sheep, predominated. An open spinnet was in one corner,
