r music; you've given up
everything in the shape of reading; how long, Fanny, will you go on in
this sad manner?" Lady Selina paused, but, as Fanny did not immediately
reply, she continued her speech "I've begged you to go on with your
reading, because nothing but mental employment will restore your mind
to its proper tone. I'm sure I've brought you the second volume of
Gibbon twenty times, but I don't believe you've read a chapter this
month back. How long will you allow yourself to go on in this sad
manner?"

"Not long, Selina. As you say, I'm sad enough."

"But is it becoming in you, Fanny, to grieve in this way for a man whom
you yourself rejected because he was unworthy of you?"

"Selina, I've told you before that such was not the case. I believe him
to be perfectly worthy of me, and of any one much my superior too."

"But you did reject him, Fanny: you bade papa tell him to discontinue
his visits--didn't you?"

Fanny felt that her cousin was taking an unfair advantage in throwing
thus in her teeth her own momentary folly in having been partly
persuaded, partly piqued, into quarrelling with her lover; and she
resented it as such. "If I did," she said, somewhat angrily, "it does
not make my grief any lighter, to know that I brought it on myself."

"No, Fanny; but it should show you that the loss for which you grieve
is past recovery. Sorrow, for which there is no cure, should cease to
be grieved for, at any rate openly. If Lord Ballindine were to die you
would not allow his death to doom you to perpetual sighs, and perpetual
inactivity. No; you'd then know that grief was hopeless, and you'd
recover."

"But Lord Ballindine is not dead," said Fanny.

"Ah! that's just the point," continued her ladyship; "he should be dead
to you; to you he should now be just the same as though he were in his
grave. You loved him some time since, and accepted him; but you found
your love misplaced,--unreturned, or at any rate coldly returned.
Though you loved him, you passed a deliberate judgment on him, and
wisely rejected him. Having done so, his name should not be on your
lips; his form and figure should be forgotten. No thoughts of him
should sully your mind, no love for him should be permitted to rest in
your heart; it should be rooted out, whatever the exertion may cost
you."

"Selina, I believe you have no heart yourself."

"Perhaps as much as yourself, Fanny. I've heard of some people who were
said to be all heart;