carried too far, and thus have the effect of unfitting her for that
work. When Elizabeth Garrow made up her mind that the finding of a
husband was not the only purpose of life, she did very well. It is
very well that a young lady should feel herself capable of going
through the world happily without one. But in teaching herself this
she also taught herself to think that there was a certain merit in
refusing herself the natural delight of a lover, even though the
possession of the lover were compatible with all her duties to
herself, her father and mother, and the world at large. It was not
that she had determined to have no lover. She made no such resolve,
and when the proper lover came he was admitted to her heart. But
she declared to herself unconsciously that she must put a guard upon
herself, lest she should be betrayed into weakness by her own
happiness. She had resolved that in loving her lord she would not
worship him, and that in giving her heart she would only so give it
as it should be given to a human creature like herself. She had
acted on these high resolves, and hence it had come to pass,--not
unnaturally,--that Mr. Godfrey Holmes had told her that it was "her
fault."

She was a pretty, fair girl, with soft dark-brown hair, and soft
long dark eyelashes. Her grey eyes, though quiet in their tone,
were tender and lustrous. Her face was oval, and the lines of her
cheek and chin perfect in their symmetry. She was generally quiet
in her demeanour, but when moved she could rouse herself to great
energy, and speak with feeling and almost with fire. Her fault was
a reverence for martyrdom in general, and a feeling, of which she
was unconscious, that it became a young woman to be unhappy in
secret;--that it became a young woman, I might rather say, to have a
source of unhappiness hidden from the world in general, and endured