ordered my own mind, nor made my own fate. My world is in the afar-off and the hereafter,—to them I leave it. Still, the spirit's wing will melt in the feverish exertion, and the lofty aspiration grovel for a time dejected on the earth. Where are the lips from which words have not, at some period or another, escaped in all the bitterness of discontent?—such moods are the key-notes of universal sympathy; and it matters little whether the worn-out feeling, or the exhausted imagination, produced that melancholy, which is half apathy, half mournfulness.
Day after day passed by, and Francesca felt the burden of time more insupportable. To the period of Lord Avonleigh's return she looked with growing terror; for strangely does the fancy exaggerate every subject on which it is permitted to dwell unchecked. The sadness and monotony of her actual state were infinitely preferable to the restraint, to the exertion, of forming new ties, and forcing herself to answer to their duties and to their affections.
Charles Aubyn, the young clergyman who had performed the last sacred offices at the grave of Guido, sometimes deemed himself privileged, in right of his spiritual calling, to break in upon her seclusion with words of comfort, and even rebuke
