not stung the less, when he saw her again, and beheld a new character
from the hand of death graven upon her form. No; we may triumph over all
weakness, but that of the affections. Perhaps in this dreary and haggard
interval of time, these two persons loved each other more purely, more
strongly, more enthusiastically, than they had ever done at any former
period of their eventful history. Over the hardest stone, as over the
softest turf, the green moss will force its verdure and sustain its life!



CHAPTER IV.

THE EVENING BEFORE THE TRIAL.--THE COUSINS.--THE CHANGE IN
MADELINE.--THE FAMILY OF GRASSDALE MEET ONCE MORE BENEATH ONE
ROOF.

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,
For Sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
[Hope] is a flatterer,
A parasite, a keeper back of death;
Who gently would dissolve the bands of death
Which false Hope lingers in extremity?
--Richard II.

It was the evening before the trial. Lester and his daughters lodged at a
retired and solitary house in the suburbs of the town of York; and
thither, from the village some miles distant, in which he had chosen his
own retreat, Walter now proceeded across fields laden with the ripening