possible in the spiritual region where old Trevor might be
supposed to be) would be henceforward like a testament in black letter,
voided by good sense and better knowledge and time, the most certain
agency of all. And his conviction had been more than carried out in the
first years of his married life. Lucy forgot what was required of her.
She thought no more of her father's will. It glided away into the unseen
along with so many other things, extravagances, or if not extravagances,
still phantasies of youth. She found enough in her new life--in her
husband, her baby, and the humble community which looked up to her and
claimed everything from her--to occupy both her mind and her hands. Life
seemed to be so full that there was no time for more.

It had been no doing of Sir Tom's that little Jock, the brother who had
been Lucy's child, her Mentor, her counsellor and guide, had been
separated from her for so long. Jock had been sent to school with his
own entire concurrence and control. He was a little philosopher with a
mind beyond his years, and he had seemed to understand fully, without
any childish objection, the reason why he should be separated from her,
and even why it was necessary to give up the hope of visiting his
sister. The first year it was because she was absent on her prolonged
wedding tour: the next because Jock was himself away on a long and
delightful expedition with a tutor, who had taken a special fancy to
him. Afterwards the baby was expected, and all exciting visits and
visitors were given up. They had met in the interval. Lucy had visited
Jock at his school, and he had been with them in London on several
occasions. But there had been little possibility of anything like their
old intercourse. Perhaps they could never again be to each other what
they had been when these two young creatures, strangely separated from
all about them, had been alone in the world, having entire and perfect
confidence in each other. They both looked back upon these bygone times
with a sort of regretful consciousness of the difference; but Lucy was
very happy in her new life, and Jock was a perfectly natural boy, given
to no sentimentalities, not jealous, and enjoying his existence too
completely to sigh for the time when he was a quaint old-fashioned
child, and knew no life apart from his sister.

Their intercourse then had been so pretty, so tender and touching; the
child being at once his sister's charge and her superio