he day, I
came to join her, even if she spoke not, her sweet face brightened. When
she sang, she beckoned me to come near to her, and looked at me fixedly,
with eyes ever tender, often tearful; when she drew she would pause and
glance over her shoulder to see that I was watching her, and point to
the drawings with a smile of strange significance, as if they conveyed
in some covert allegory messages meant for me; so, at least, I
interpreted her smile, and taught myself to say, "Yes, Lilian, I
understand!"

And more than once, when I had so answered, she rose, and kissed
my forehead. I thought my heart would have broken when I felt that
spirit-like melancholy kiss.

And yet how marvellously the human mind teaches itself to extract
consolations from its sorrows. The least wretched of my hours were
those that I had passed in that saddened room, seeking how to establish
fragments of intercourse, invent signs, by which each might interpret
each, between the intellect I had so laboriously cultured, so arrogantly
vaunted, and the fancies wandering through the dark, deprived of their
guide in reason. It was something even of joy to feel myself needed for
her guardianship, endeared and yearned for still by some unshattered
instinct of her heart; and when, parting from her for the night, I stole
the moment in which on her soft face seemed resting least of shadow, to
ask, in a trembling whisper, "Lilian, are the angels watching over
you?" and she would answer "Yes," sometimes in words, sometimes with a
mysterious happy smile--then--then I went to my lonely room, comforted
and thankful.

CHAPTER LXV.

The blow that had fallen on my hearth effectually, inevitably killed
all the slander that might have troubled me in joy. Before the awe of a
great calamity the small passions of a mean malignity slink abashed. I
had requested Mrs. Ashleigh not to mention the vile letter which Lilian
had received. I would not give a triumph to the unknown calumniator, nor
wring forth her vain remorse, by the pain of acknowledging an indignity
to my darling's honour; yet, somehow or other, the true cause of
Lilian's affliction had crept out,--perhaps through the talk of
servants,--and the public shock was universal. By one of those instincts
of justice that lie deep in human hearts, though in ordinary moments
overlaid by many a worldly layer, all felt (all mothers felt especially)
that innocence alone could have been so unprepared for reproach