lightly against the pillow; her soft regular breathing just broke the
complete stillness enough to give the aspect of sleep, instead of that
of death. She was fair enough, in her sweet girlish beauty and
innocence, to have been a poet's or an artist's inspiration. The
mother's eyes grew very dim as she looked at her child, but she never
guessed that there had been more than the stir of surprise in her heart
that day--that she was "sleeping for sorrow."

It was twilight in the room when Lucia woke. She came slowly to the
recollection of the past, and the consciousness of the present, and
without moving began to gather up her thoughts and understand what had
happened to her, and why she had slept. The door was ajar, and voices
could be faintly heard talking in the salon. She even distinguished her
mother's tones, and Lady Dighton's, but there were no others. It was a
relief to her. She thought she ought to get up and go to them, but if
Maurice had been there, or even Sir John, she felt that her courage
would have failed. She raised herself up, and pushed back her disordered
hair; with a hand pressed to each temple, she tried to realize how she
had awoke that very morning, hopeful and happy, and that she had had a
dreadful loss which was _her own_--only hers, and could meet with no
sympathy from others. But then she remembered that it had met with
sympathy already--not much in words, but in tone and look and
action--from the one unfailing friend of her whole life. Maurice
knew--Maurice did not contemn her--there was a little humiliation in the
thought, but more sweetness. She went over the whole scene in the
chapel, and for the first time there came into her mind a sense of the
inexpressible tenderness which had soothed her as she sat there half
stupefied.

"Dear Maurice!" she said to herself, and then as her recollection grew
more vivid, a sudden shame seized her--neck and arms and brow were
crimson in a moment, with the shock of the new idea--and she sprang up
and began to dress, in hopes to escape from it by motion.

But before she was ready to leave the room her sorrow had come back, too
strong and bitter to leave place for other thoughts. The vivid hope of
Percy's faithful recollection enduring at least for a year, had come to
give her strength and courage in the very time when her youthful
energies had almost broken down under the weight of so many troubles; it
had been a kind of prop on which she leaned through he