I, hope for? O, that we had met earlier! how happy we might have been! Yet, what do I take from Lord Marchmont, but that which he cares not for,—my dreams, my thoughts, my feelings? Alas, I cannot deceive myself! I am wrong, very wrong; I could not have written to my uncle what I have written here! I can write no longer, it only makes me wretched!
And Henrietta turned away to be more wretched still. She felt what she did not own even to herself—the humiliation, the degradation, of her position. It is love's most dreadful penalty to fear, lest that very love lower you in the eyes of even him who inspires it; and yet this was the inevitable result of such an attachment. But Henrietta's first step in life had been a false one: she had married a man whom she did not love; and she had learned, too late, that in marriage nothing can supply the place of affection.
And she had a yet harder lesson to learn—that nothing can supply the place of strong,
