out in the old times; but though she thus saw it and felt, she could not with all her endeavors find the handle of the drawer, the richly-wrought knob of ivory, the little door that opened into the secret place.  How long she stood by it, attempting again and again to find what was as familiar to her as her own hand, what was before her, visible in every line, what she felt with fingers which began to tremble, she could not tell.  Time did not count with her as with common men.  She did not grow weary, or require refreshment or rest, like those who were still of this world.  Put at length her head grew giddy and her heart failed.  A cold despair took possession of her soul.  She could do nothing, then,—­nothing; neither by help of man, neither by use of her own faculties, which were greater and clearer than ever before.  She sank down upon the floor at the foot of that old toy, which had pleased her in the softness of her old age, to which she had trusted the fortunes of another; by which, in wantonness and folly she had sinned, she had sinned!  And she thought she saw standing round her companions in the land she had left, saying, “It is impossible, impossible!” with infinite pity in their eyes; and the face of him who had given her permission to come, yet who had said no word to her to encourage her in what was against nature.  And there came into her heart a longing to fly, to get home, to be back in the land where her fellows were, and her appointed place.  A child lost, how pitiful that is! without power to reason and divine how help will come; but a soul lost, outside of one method of existence, withdrawn from the other, knowing no way to retrace its steps, nor how help can come!  There had been no bitterness in passing from earth to the land where she had gone; but now there came upon her soul, in all the power of her new faculties, the bitterness of death.  The place which was hers she had forsaken and left, and the place that had been hers knew her no more.

VII.

Mary, when she left her kind friend in the vicarage, went out and took a long walk.  She had received a shock so great that it took all sensation from her, and threw her into the seething and surging of an excitement altogether beyond her control.  She could not think until she had got familiar with the idea, which indeed had been vaguely shaping itself in her mind ever since she had emerged from the first profound gloom and prostration of the shadow of death.  She had never definitely thought of her position before,—­never even asked herself what was to become of her when Lady Mary died.  She did not see, any more than Lady Mary did, why she should ever die; and girls, who have never wanted anything in their lives, who have had no sharp experience to enlighten them, are slow to think upon such subjects.  She had not expected anything; her mind had not formed any idea of inheritance; and it had not surprised her to hear