. The
explanation I had previously given, discredited then, was now accepted
without a question. Lilian's present state accounted for all that ill
nature had before misconstrued. Her good name was restored to its maiden
whiteness, by the fate that had severed the ties of the bride. The
formal dwellers on the Hill vied with the franker, warmer-hearted
households of Low Town in the nameless attentions by which sympathy and
respect are rather delicately indicated than noisily proclaimed. Could
Lilian have then recovered and been sensible of its repentant homage,
how reverently that petty world would have thronged around her! And, ah!
could fortune and man's esteem have atoned for the blight of hopes that
had been planted and cherished on ground beyond their reach, ambition
and pride might have been well contented with the largeness of the
exchange that courted their acceptance. Patients on patients crowded on
me. Sympathy with my sorrow seemed to create and endear a more trustful
belief in my skill. But the profession I had once so enthusiastically
loved became to me wearisome, insipid, distasteful; the kindness heaped
on me gave no comfort,--it but brought before me more vividly the
conviction that it came too late to avail me: it could not restore to me
the mind, the love, the life of my life, which lay dark and shattered in
the brain of my guileless Lilian. Secretly I felt a sullen resentment.
I knew that to the crowd the resentment was unjust. The world itself is
but an appearance; who can blame it if appearances guide its laws? But
to those who had been detached from the crowd by the professions of
friendship,--those who, when the slander was yet new, and might have
been awed into silence had they stood by my side,--to the pressure of
their hands, now, I had no response.

Against Mrs. Poyntz, above all others, I bore a remembrance of
unrelaxed, unmitigable indignation. Her schemes for her daughter's
marriage had triumphed: Jane was Mrs. Ashleigh Sumner. Her mind was,
perhaps, softened now that the object which had sharpened its worldly
faculties was accomplished: but in vain, on first hearing of my
affliction, had this she-Machiavel owned a humane remorse, and, with all
her keen comprehension of each facility that circumstances gave to
her will, availed herself of the general compassion to strengthen the
popular reaction in favour of Lilian's assaulted honour; in vain had
she written to me with a gentleness of sympath