on to depart aroused
the Lady Anne. "Ellinor! my Ellinor!" she cried, and throwing herself
forward, she stretched forth her arms. In another moment she was
weeping on the bosom of her friend. She wept for a long time without
restraint, for the Lady Ellinor said nothing, but drew her nearer and
nearer to her bosom, and tenderly pressed the hand that was clasped in
hers.

"I ought not to be weeping here," at length she said, "I ought to let
you leave me, but I have not the courage, I cannot bear to lose your
friendship,--your affection, my Ellinor! Can you love me? Have you
loved me, knowing all the while, as every one must? To-day--this very
hour, since you left me, I learned:--no I cannot tell you! Look on
that page, Ellinor, you will see why you find me thus. I am the most
wretched, wretched creature!"--here again she burst into an agony of
uncontrollable grief.

* * * * *

Who can describe the feelings of the Lady Anne--alone, in her chamber,
looking up at the portrait of her mother, upon which she had so often
gazed with delight and reverence! "Is it possible?" said she to
herself, "can this be she, of whom I have read such dreadful things?
Have all my young and happy days been but a dream, from which I wake
at last? Is not this dreadful certainty still as a hideous dream to
me?"

She had another cause of bitter grief. She loved the young and
noble-minded Lord Russell, the Earl of Bedford's eldest son; and she
had heard him vow affection and faithfulness to her. She now perceived
at once the reasons why the Earl of Bedford had objected to their
marriage: she almost wondered within herself that the Lord Russel
should have chosen her; and though she loved him more for avowing his
attachment, though her heart pleaded warmly for him, she determined to
renounce his plighted love. "It must be done," she said, "and better
now;--delay will but bring weakness. _Now_ I can write--I feel that I
have strength." And the Lady Anne wrote, and folded with a trembling
hand the letter which should give up her life's happiness; and fearing
her resolution might not hold, she despatched it by a messenger, as
the Lord Russel was then in the neighbourhood; and returned mournfully
to her own chamber. She opened an old volume which lay upon her
toilette--a volume to which she turned in time of trouble, to seek
that peace which the world cannot give.

Lady Ellinor soon aroused her by the tidings that a me