and her healthy human intelligence could only see
injustice in the woe that had befallen her. From her childhood up she
had striven towards the light, had loved all that is beautiful, had
worshipped righteousness; out of this had it issued that her life was
sunk in woe unfathomable, hopeless of rescue for ever. She was the
sacrifice of others' wrong-doing; the evil-heartedness of one man, the
thoughtless error of another, had brought this upon her.

Her character, like the elemental forces of earth, converted to
beneficent energy the burden of corruption thrust upon it. Active at
first because she dreaded the self-communings of idleness, she found in
her labour and her endurance sources of stern inspiration; her
indestructible idealism grasped at the core of spiritual beauty in a
life even such as this. She did not reason with herself hysterically of
evil passions to be purified by asceticism, of mysterious iniquities to
be washed out in her very life's blood; but the great principles of
devotion and renunciation became soothing and exalting presences, before
which the details of her daily task lost their toilsome or revolting
aspect in a hallowed purpose. Her work was a work of piety, not only to
the living, but to the beloved dead. If her father could know of what
she was now doing, he would be comforted by it; if he knew that she did
it for his sake it would bring him happiness. This truth she saw: that
though life be stripped of every outward charm there may yet remain in
the heart of it, like a glorious light, that which is the source of all
beauty--Love. She strove to make Love the essence of her being. Her
mother, whom it was so hard to cherish for her own sake, she would and
could love because her father had done so; that father, whose only
existence now was in her own, she loved with fervour which seemed to
grow daily. Supreme, fostered by these other affections, exalted by the
absence of a single hope for self, reigned the first and last love of
her woman-soul. Every hard task achieved for love's sake rendered her in
thought more worthy of him whom she made the ideal man. He would never
know of the passion which she perfected to be her eternal support; but,
as there is a sense of sweetness in the thought that we may be held dear
by some who can neither come near us nor make known to us their
good-will, so did it seem to Emily that from her love would go forth a
secret influence, and that Wilfrid, all unknowing