There is said to be a stage in sorrow, after which an addition can be borne with apathy; but this the heart of Marion seemed never likely to reach. It is a natural source of comfort, however, in mourning over the loss of those we love, to find that they are appreciated and lamented by others; and many kind letters of condolence on the death of Sir Arthur reached the young mourner, from old companions and young acquaintances. Some were written with overdone and inflated expressions of sorrow, as if the writer had lost a parent of her own; and if the occasion had been less heartbreaking to herself, Marion might almost have smiled at their tone of exaggerated grief. Others wrote studied compositions, so beautifully got up, and with such skilfully turned periods, that the writer must have felt certain of Marion's "Life and Correspondence" being hereafter collected and published; while others concluded with "Yours, in haste," as an evident apology for neither head nor heart being much enlisted on the occasion; but all were received with grateful interest, being more or less a proof of kind intentions, very soothing to the feelings of a solitary girl.

Each letter, as it came, caused her a palpitation of hope, followed by a pang of disappointment; for every morning she arose with a confident hope that now Richard Granville must certainly write, and every evening closed in with an added weight of discouragement and sorrow; for now indeed the roses of life seemed all to have faded, and the thorns only to remain.

As Shakspeare observes, "every one can master a grief but he that has it;" and among the many well-meaning but commonplace acquaintances who came to gossip over the sorrows of Marion, and to ascertain exactly how much Sir Arthur had left, there was not one to whom she could unveil her feelings. Each of her well-intentioned visitors said a few words in praise of Sir Arthur, enough to convince Marion that no one but herself could appreciate the hundredth part of his inestimable worth—a sentence or two then followed of pious reflection, obviously spoken with restraint, and picked up by rote from some volume of religious meditations, and the whole was generally concluded in a masterly manner, by repeating a few texts of Scripture, strung together from a concordance.

There is a solemn dignity in real grief, beside which all commonplace or trifling consolations fall powerless and cold; but strangers in return for their contributions of sympathy and comfort, evidently expected from Marion an ostentatious display of affection, and were often not a little disappointed, at the pale, still, concentrated calmness of the lonely girl, who, subdued beneath the weight of her recent sorrow, received visitors only when she felt able to do so with composure, speaking to them with gentle, melancholy kindness, and evidently endeavoring to derive all the comfort she could from their society; yet often in the solitude which followed, did she feel inclined to agree with an author, who remarks, that "la pitie n'est pas le plus due a celui qui pleure dans la solitude."

Marion seemed to live in a dream, yet she gazed on the daylight and the people moving about on their errands of pleasure or business, till she felt that the whole was a sad reality. The common, every day routine of life seemed strange and unnatural, amidst the agony of her first sorrow, when the tomb had so recently closed over her earliest friend. She felt as if nature herself should have suspended her ordinary course, and as if the melancholy awe so impressed upon her own heart should extend to everything animate or inanimate around—as if the very sun itself should scarcely rise and shine as heretofore; and nothing appeared to Marion so strange, as that sameness visible in the outward world, contrasted with the mighty revolution in all her own inward feelings. Marion tried to take a lesson in cheerful resignation, from thinking sometimes of the many created by the same Almighty Father, and yet suffering far more than she had ever done; and her eye fell one day on a blind beggar, seated near her window, shivering with cold, emaciated with hunger, solitary and deserted, shut out from the light of day, friendless, homeless, and desolate, with none to sympathize in his sorrows, or to cheer him by their affection. "Yet," thought Marion, "that miserable being finds an object to live for, and would not perhaps willingly die! God gives something to all his creatures; and who makes me to differ from the most wretched. But bodily wants are not the real sorrows of life! O no! The mind, when relieved from such abject cares, has more leisure to grieve over withered hopes and blighted affections; yet all trials, if rightly received, are but blessings in disguise. It is well if, by tasting such sorrows as mine—and they are many—I am taught to avoid the far greater and more permanent evils of futurity. In this world, we are suspended over the abyss of eternity, by a thread which grows more feeble every hour; and all events should be welcome which are ordained by infinite wisdom, to prepare me for that hour when my place on earth shall be vacant, and my place in eternity—in a ceaseless eternity, shall be filled."

Time has wings, even when they move most heavily, and as day after day passed slowly onwards, Marion felt more and more astonished to hear nothing of Agnes, who had written but once, a very few days after her departure from home, in gay and almost triumphant spirits, boasting of the excessive attention she met with from all the party, of the splendor in which they travelled, of the admiration she had herself excited, and of several magnificent presents she had received from Lord Doncaster. In a postscript to this letter, she expressed a careless, patronizing hope, that poor, dear Sir Arthur was now convalescent; and as for anything but a recovery, she seemed no more to doubt it than if death had been altogether abolished. To Marion's surprise, when looking at the signature of Agnes, a broad line had been drawn through the name of Dunbar, and the whole was surrounded by a fantastic wreath of flourishes, exactly imitating the very peculiar way in which Lord Doncaster was accustomed usually to encircle his own autograph; and much she marvelled what this uncommon device was intended to indicate, though she secretly dreaded to hear the interpretation of it, which her fears had at first suggested.

As the mind and heart become more matured in this world, they too often become, from sad experience, more apprehensive of evil, and more suspicious of earthly friendships; but it was otherwise with Marion in respect to Richard Granville; though a dark curtain had fallen suddenly between them, all intercourse was most unaccountably suspended, and the very thought of his attachment, once a pleasure without alloy, was now accompanied by a heavy, leaden depression and anxiety. She told herself a thousand times over that all would hereafter be explained, and yet her heart seemed turning to stone, while day after day dawned and closed without a line to give her comfort or to reassure her heart.

In this state of wearing suspense a visiting card was brought to Marion one morning of Captain De Crespigny's, accompanied by a letter which he had brought from Sir Patrick, strongly urging on her, in almost arbitrary terms, his earnest desire that she should reconsider her decision against her friend, and no longer wasting her affections on a penniless curate, who had proved himself undeserving of her,—bestow them where they would be so much better appreciated, and where they would exalt her to so distinguished a situation. Marion was astonished to think how Sir Patrick could know that she had any cause of dissatisfaction against Mr. Granville, whom she had never even named of late; but resolute if possible to avoid meeting Captain De Crespigny, she was denied again and again when he called, though to her surprise he persevered in almost daily inquiring for her, and numbered his visiting cards conspicuously on the corner till they amounted at last to more than a dozen.

Marion was sitting alone one evening, beside her solitary hearth, and to a spectator she would have seemed of more than earthly beauty, though the cold tear stood unheeded on her cheek, while her memory had become haunted by the ghost of departed happiness. She thought of her deceased uncle in his silent grave, yet it seemed as if still she could trace his step and hear his voice by her side. All was still as death, her soul seemed wandering in a mysterious existence, amidst the solitary and deserted world, and hope itself grew dim within her breast. The flood-gates of memory were now unclosed, pouring into her heart and spirit a ceaseless stream of old recollections, old scenes, and recent sorrows; while the bright mirror of joy which had once shone in radiant splendor before her eyes seemed now broken to shivers. No one seemed destined hereafter to know the deep mine of thoughts and affections which lay unspoken in her breast. She felt as if the summer might shine in its brightness, the spring might be gay with the blossoms of hope, but that her spring and summer would return in this world no more, yet she believed and knew that it was better to witness the death of every dear affection, and the burial of every promising expectation, if, when thus blighted and withered upon earth, they became rooted and strengthened for eternity.

Martin had brought in the tea-tray, and Marion scarcely noticed his entrance or departure while mournfully gazing on the dim embers expiring in the grate, when her attention became suddenly attracted by hearing a carriage draw up close to the door, and her pale cheek grew paler, when a moment afterwards her sister hurried into the room, and with a strange, wild, hysterical smile, clasped her arms around Marion, and locked her in a long embrace. Marion thought no grief too great for the loss they had both sustained, and yet she became startled to perceive that Agnes was actually shivering with agitation; that her eyes were blood-shot, her hair dishevelled, her whole form shrunk and altered, while her lips quivered for a moment as if she would have spoken but could not articulate; and a look of unutterable anguish swept across her pallid countenance. At length, burying her face on Marion's shoulder, she exclaimed, in a voice of thrilling agony,

"I knew you would welcome me! I knew it, Marion! Cold and heartless as I have been, you will not reproach me. You deserve a better sister."

"I could love none other so well," replied Marion, alarmed and shocked at the unexpected excess of Agnes' grief. "We are all the world to each other now, Agnes!"

"Yes! yes! Who ever dreamed it could come to this! You alone will pity me, Marion! Here at least I shall find a refuge till I find one in the grave! Do not look so alarmed, Marion! If I had brought disgrace to this house, I never would have entered it again; but I have been duped, made miserable, and, worse than all, ridiculous! The whole world will laugh, and well they may; but in the living death I have brought upon myself, still one friend remains who will never reproach me for my folly. Dear kind Sir Arthur, too, if he had lived! Alas! Marion, I know his value now; but I know it too late! To obtain his forgiveness, I could follow him to the very grave."

Marion gasped for breath, and tried to suppress her emotion, that she might compose the mind of Agnes, whose voice had become hollow, her eyes were brightened by fever, and there was a frantic energy in her tone and manner so tearfully agitating, that Marion entreated her to postpone all farther discussion till she was better able to bear it; but Agnes continued to pour forth her words like a gushing torrent.

"I shall be better when all is told! Hear me out now, Marion! Believe me it is better! You remember Dixon!—that wretched woman who attempted once to destroy me. She stole into my room at Mrs. O'Donoghoe's some weeks ago. Imagine my horror and affright when she entered! Dixon related to me her own history—seduced, ruined, and forsaken by Captain De Crespigny. She fancied at first that he had deserted her for me; but she has since discovered, as I have done, Marion, that he is attached only to you!"

"It matters little, Agnes, who Captain De Crespigny fancies for a passing hour, provided it be one whose happiness cannot be injured by his caprice."

"Dixon added," continued Agnes, with a gasping sob of angry emotion, "that Lord Doncaster had been equally deceived into believing that his nephew liked me—that I was the only obstacle to his marrying the heiress, Miss Howard; and his whole attentions at Harrowgate were paid to expose my self-interestedness,—he had carried it on as a farce to amuse an idle hour. The plot had amused him; and, after a time, he became flattered by the consciousness that a girl, young, beautiful, and admired, as I was, could be induced to accept him; but Mrs. O'Donoghoe is now actually his mistress! Spare me, Marion, the recapitulation of all that passed: it is too humbling, too dreadful. She told me that Captain De Crespigny, the only man I ever loved, had spoken of me to his uncle—as—as I deserved, with scorn, derision, and censure! She repeated the whole scene, and I then saw myself as I am in the sight of others—seared in heart, degraded, contemptible, wretched! and oh! how ungrateful to those who were, indeed, my friends!"

Marion saw that Agnes, when she spoke, gazed at the portrait of Sir Arthur; and tears sprang into the eyes of both, as they looked upon that silent memorial of past worth and affection.

"My reputation must be irreparably injured in the world's eye by such association!" continued Agnes, rapidly. "All is agony and horror! While Dixon yet spoke, I hated myself and everything around. Shame and mortification overpowered me! All became shadowy, confused, and wavering in my thoughts. That night I was seized with fever and delirium. A sick-nurse was placed to attend on me; and I am thankful to find that Mrs. O'Donoghoe, with her party, instantly left the house. I am ashamed to think what folly my ravings must have disclosed! The worst horror of fever is, that it betrays all to others! I hovered on the very brink of the grave! Oh! that I had been as fully prepared to enter another world as I was to leave this! How happy are those whose trials and mortifications are buried in the silent grave, and whose pulse is no longer like mine—the knell of a living death! Life is, indeed, an awful gift, with its deceitful hopes and consuming sorrows!"

"Yes, if we will not be satisfied with the happiness provided for us by God himself; if we will persist in laying out a plan of life for ourselves, and in being wretched when the infinite wisdom of our Creator sees fit to alter it. Even now, Agnes, you may, if you choose, have peace and cheerfulness. How much better it is, to lose all your lovers, than to marry a bad husband! Let us live for each other; let us improve our minds; let us console the many who are worse off than ourselves; let us encourage one another in all the difficulties of life; and, whatever is wanting to us now, we can look the more thankfully forward to those regions of eternal joy, for which our sorrows here are all sent on purpose to prepare us. Dear Agnes, for my sake you must not despond."

"I ought not, Marion, while you are my sister! I hate the world and every thing in it, but who would not love you," replied Agnes, in a voice of dark and stormy grief, while no tear was on her cheek. "My heart seems dry as summer dust! My body is a dreary sepulchre to my mind, all dark, cold, and desolate. There is nothing in life worth living for!"

Though little of Agnes' depression was really caused by Sir Arthur's death, yet her grief became now as deep as crape and bombazine could make it. She had not the generosity to struggle against her mortified feelings, or to spare those of Marion, but from day to day her wayward mind seemed to cherish the chagrin which inch by inch consumed her. No gentle self-renunciation appeared in her sorrow, but she seemed to fancy that in all the world there was no tear except of her shedding,—no sigh but of her breathing,—and she forgot to observe how Marion had banished all her own anxieties and cares while listening to the egotism of grief in another, thus bearing the whole burden of both. Agnes gradually delivered herself up to a state of peevish, listless, apathetic despondency. If she attempted to read, her eyes looked only on a wilderness of words without meaning; she had no taste for work, not a correspondent in the world, and never had cared for a newspaper; therefore unable to fix her attention on any employment, she proceeded with sullen, mechanical indifference, through the ordinary routine of life, without energy and without interest.

Agnes' mind was like a crushed butterfly, disfigured and valueless; all its buoyant hopes and fantastic flights for ever at an end. She knew not that sunshine of the heart, often divinely given amidst the darkest hours of life, when inward peace, amidst external sorrow, might be compared to a cheerful, quiet room, while a torrent and tempest are raging unheeded around. Agnes mistakenly believed that the only possible aggravation to her melancholy would arise, if her thoughts were turned to religion, since hitherto she had seen in it nothing but the gloomy terrors of futurity. She never had cultivated any taste for reading that infallible balm to the depressed, and least of all would she have thought of appealing to the Holy Scriptures for relief from the cankering irritation of her proud but broken spirit, and nothing had ever annoyed her more, than when Marion, one day, from the fulness of her own heart, observed with soothing gentleness, that they should be too grateful for the blessings bestowed, to repine for those which were withheld, especially as affliction was generally the surest way to amend the heart.

"Yes! but in mending you may break it," replied Agnes, discontentedly. "My existence here is a living death, with nothing to care for, nothing to hope for, nothing to do, meditating continually on my feelings, hating life, and yet dreading death."

"But," replied Marion, laying her hand on the Bible, "here, Agnes, I find enough to care for, enough to hope for, and more than enough to do. No mortal being has all his wishes granted, and why should we expect to be an exception? The world and its affections have deprived us of peace, and this is the only guiding-star which can lead us to find it again. If we were to study a portion of this volume together every day——"

"Marion! I am surely melancholy enough already, without becoming methodistical!" interrupted Agnes, impatiently. "I wept when I was born; and every day since shews me I had cause to do so! If I ever do get up my spirits again, I may perhaps read the Bible more carefully, but, not while I feel so low and depressed."

"You remind me, Agnes, of Lady Towercliffe saying last year, that she felt much too ill to see a doctor, but would send for one if she became better. We find ourselves lonely and benighted now; but here is a bright path of glory pointed out, and strength offered us to pursue it."

"Well, Marion! if you must soar to the clouds, pray leave me to grovel on the earth!" replied Agnes, peevishly. "You are so fond of reading now, that, like Petrarch, your head will be pillowed on a book when you die; but can you not talk of something more cheerful to me? Those mournful subjects are fit only for a deathbed, or a tract. When people talk to me of religion, I always feel like the felons at Newgate in the condemned pew, with their coffins gaping at their elbow! What makes you always talk so dismally about resignation now, Marion?"

"My own sorrows and your's, Agnes. We both need comfort, and neither of us can find any, except in religion. 'God gives what bankrupt nature never can.' The effect of time would be only to benumb our hearts; but faith could restore them to cheerfulness."

"You might as well plant flowers on a tomb-stone, as attempt to enliven me, Marion! It is a hopeless endeavor! No! the wing of hope is broken within me for ever and ever. It is the misfortune of having too much feeling! Life seems to me a cold and bitter blast, with all its events, like snow-flakes, driving in my face. I have been brought into it without my consent, and shall be torn from it against my will, while

"Yet, Agnes, there is not probably a single living being with whom you would change places!"

"Yes! hundreds! thousands!"

"Indeed! Would you take the looks, habits, tastes, age, health, and conversation, of any other person who could be named, instead of your own?"

"No! not exactly! Probably no person living would agree to such an exchange, and least of all one who has in some respects such ample reason to be satisfied," replied Agnes, with a complacent glance at the mirror, which was not, however, so satisfactory as in former days; for her eye had lost much of its lustre, the bloom had faded from her cheek, and her very features looked crushed and contracted by the gnawing effect of mortification. "I should like to have the fortune of Caroline Howard, the rank of Charlotte Malcolm——"

"But Agnes! you are not entitled to expect such a pic-nic of happiness, 'made of ev'ry creature's best.' No; the more we look into life, the more we shall see how equally distributed are its enjoyments—satiety to the rich, contentment to the poor, and compensation of one kind or other to all, for their various privations; but one only gift of God makes life a blessing or a curse, according as it is given or withheld; and it is only in proportion as we have the gifts of Divine grace showered upon us, that we can measure our own happiness, or that of any other mortal being."

Agnes's ill-humor was growing rapidly into misanthropy, and her sorrow seemed never likely to be of that kind which "forgets to weep, and learns to pray;" but Marion's more happily gifted mind clung to every natural source of enjoyment which offered itself, being resolute, even when she was not happy, for the sake of Agnes, to appear so. Marion's sorrows taught her to feel tenfold for others; but the sympathies of Agnes were concentrated entirely on herself.

There is not merely piety, but good humor also, in being happy; and much ill-humor is invariably associated with that grief which refuses to be consoled. Agnes had strewed her own path with thorns, and would not be comforted; her heart had now the frozen coldness of an ice-bound stream, on which the breeze might play, or the sun might shine, while it still continued cold and cheerless as before; but Marion, resisting all the selfish supineness of sorrow, found out many around to whom her time could be made useful. With no schemes of worldly ambition, she felt that there must be, in every heart, some object to live for; and in her solitary walks, the very trees and flowers became her companions, while the brightness of nature's coloring, the hum of bees, the chirping of birds, the ripple of a pebbly stream, or the daisy she picked on the grass, reminded her that there are simple pleasures she was born to enjoy, and of which she had formerly been deprived during the long years when her best feelings had been heartlessly wasted in the tumult of education at Mrs. Penfold's. On first beholding any sign of human life and enjoyment, it seemed to Marion strange and unnatural. The joyous laugh of children at play in the fields grated harshly on her ear; but before long, she pleased herself with listening to the milk-girls gaily singing as they passed along the road, and was ready to feel for that most desolate of all beings, the blind fiddler, playing his melancholy tune on a rainy night. Religion was to Marion now like the sun behind a fog. She knew that it would before long warm, cheer, and revive her; yet for a time it seemed shorn of its brighter beams, and, in the words of a Christian poet, she was ready to say,

The emotion which Agnes felt on first returning home, had been only like the last quiver of molten lead before it becomes cold and hard for ever. She now grew daily more peevish and discontented, and, far from affording any relief to Marion only aggravated her distress; for if there were any subject more disagreeable than another to be harped upon, she fastened on it with ceaseless irritability, continually prophesying evil, and recollecting injuries. She took the most teazing view of all subjects, attributed the worst motives to everybody's conduct, and spoke with incessant and bitter invectives against all those by whom she thought herself ill-treated. Far from forgiving injuries, she seemed never, even for a moment, to forget them, while the effect of her tedious vituperation was like that of a file upon velvet, to the gentle Marion, who tried often to give a more Christian, as well as a more cheerful turn, to their tete-a-tete conversation.

It was singular that Agnes still evidently found a mysterious pleasure in exercising to the utmost her powers of torturing; and in nothing did she so deeply wound the feelings of Marion, as by constantly comparing the conduct of Richard Granville to that of Captain De Crespigny, speaking coldly of both, as being selfish, hypocritical, and deceitful. Marion's whole heart shrank from allowing any resemblance, while once or twice she spoke warmly and eloquently in defence of her absent lover; but finding that this only lifted the veil which concealed her own inmost feelings, and exposed them to one who made no generous use of her confidence, she at length passively allowed Agnes to follow the bent of her humor, and kept their discussions as much as possible on indifferent topics, taking always as cheerful and contented a view as she could of life.

"You know, Agnes," observed Marion one day, in answer to some peevish lamentations of her sister's, "we might as well attempt to carry the ocean in an oyster-shell, as to satisfy our immortal souls with anything in this life. Christians must not let their imaginations run wild after every fancy, but put on the strait-waistcoat of reason and religion, to curb their inclinations. We should not only expect, but desire the correction which is necessary, as much for us as for others. You cannot expect all our years to be summers!"

"No!" replied Agnes, discontentedly; "but they need not all be winters! You seem to think we are like the Indian savages, who must carry a weight on their heads to make them upright."

"Yes, Agnes, I do!" added Marion, gently. "It often occurs to my mind what a character mine must naturally have been, which has required so much discipline to correct it; for every sorrow or anxiety I feel is absolutely necessary for my good, I know, or it would not be sent. Though the blossoms of hope lie withered at our feet, however, let us reap the fruit hereafter, and who could wish to be fed with the promises of spring, rather than with the fulfilment of autumn?"