urning strength, only to find she can almost see the
light through it,--so thin, so fragile, has it grown. But she will not
be disheartened; and, drawing pen and paper towards her, she tries to
write.

But it is a difficult task, and her head is strangely heavy, and her
words will not come to her. A vague feeling, too, that her letter will
be unsuccessful, that her friend will fail her, distresses and damps
her power to explain her position clearly.

Who can say if Clarissa Peyton will be the same at heart as when last
they parted, with many words of good will and affection, and eyes dark
with tears?

Grief and misery, and too much of Aunt Elizabeth, have already
embittered and generated distrust in her young bosom. She is tired,
too. All day she has toiled, has worked religiously, and gone through
wearying household labor, trying to repay in some faint wise the
reluctant hospitality extended to her. At this moment a sense of utter
desolation overpowers her, and with a brain on fire, and a heart half
broken, she pushes from her the partly-written letter, and, burying
her face in her arms, breaks into low but heavy weeping.

"Papa! papa!" she sobs, miserably. It is the common refrain of all her
sorrowful dirges,--the sadder that no response ever comes to the
lonely cry. Of our dead, if we would believe them happy we must also
believe that they have forgotten us; else how (when we think on our
bleeding hearts) could they keep their bliss so perfect?

Mournfully as Mariana in her moated grange, the poor child laments,
while sobs shake her slender frame. And the day dies, and the sun goes
down, and happily some noise in the house--a step, a voice--arouses
her, and, starting as though from some ugly dream, she takes up her
pen again, and writes eagerly, and without premeditation, to the one
friend in whom she still puts faith.

CHAPTER VII.

"Life has rising ills."--DYER.

"Papa, papa," says Miss Peyton, impatiently, without eliciting any
response.

It is half-past ten, and breakfast is on the table! So are two little
white pigeons, who have flown in through the open window, and are
sitting, one on Clarissa's shoulder, the other on the edge of the
table, picking crumbs out of her plate. The sun is streaming hotly in,
the breath of flowers floating faintly in his train. A bowl of roses,
half opened and filled with the dew of early morning, lies near
Clarissa's plate. Upon the window-sill, outside, anothe