, and talk too much--But he loves me, at least
I think so, for I am sure I love him; and I try to go down amongst them
yonder, and to endure their folly, and, all things considered, I do
carry on the farce of life wonderfully well--We are but actors, you
know, and the world but a stage."

"And ours has been a sad and tragic scene," said Tyrrel, in the
bitterness of his heart, unable any longer to refrain from speech.

"It has indeed--but, Tyrrel, when was it otherwise with engagements
formed in youth and in folly? You and I would, you know, become men and
women, while we were yet scarcely more than children--We have run, while
yet in our nonage, through the passions and adventures of youth, and
therefore we are now old before our day, and the winter of our life has
come on ere its summer was well begun.--O Tyrrel! often and often have I
thought of this!--Thought of it often? Alas, when will the time come
that I shall be able to think of any thing else!"

The poor young woman sobbed bitterly, and her tears began to flow with a
freedom which they had not probably enjoyed for a length of time. Tyrrel
walked on by the side of her horse, which now prosecuted its road
homewards, unable to devise a proper mode of addressing the unfortunate
young lady, and fearing alike to awaken her passions and his own.
Whatever he might have proposed to say, was disconcerted by the plain
indications that her mind was clouded, more or less slightly, with a
shade of insanity, which deranged, though it had not destroyed, her
powers of judgment.

At length he asked her, with as much calmness as he could assume--if she
was contented--if aught could be done to render her situation more
easy--if there was aught of which she could complain which he might be
able to remedy? She answered gently, that she was calm and resigned,
when her brother would permit her to stay at home; but that when she was
brought into society, she experienced such a change as that which the
water of the brook that slumbers in a crystalline pool of the rock may
be supposed to feel, when, gliding from its quiet bed, it becomes
involved in the hurry of the cataract.

"But my brother Mowbray," she said, "thinks he is right,--and perhaps he
is so. There are things on which we may ponder too long;--and were he
mistaken, why should I not constrain myself in order to please
him--there are so few left to whom I can now give either pleasure or
pain?--I am a gay girl, too, in conv