Women are very humble in their cruelest pride.  Many a day she felt as if she could have crawled a hundred miles in the dust—­like some Catholic pilgrim—­just to get one sight of Robert Lyon.

Autumn came—­lovely and lingering late.  It was November, and yet the air felt mild as May, and the sunshine had that peculiar genial brightness which autumnal sunshine alone possesses; even as, perhaps, late happiness has in it a holy calm and sweetness which no youthful ecstasy can ever boast.

The day happened to be Hilary’s birthday.  She had taken a holiday, which she, Johanna, Elizabeth, and the baby, had spent in Richmond Park, watching the rabbits darting about under the brown fern, and the deer grazing contentedly hard by.  They had sat a long time under one of the oak trees with which the Park abounds, listening for the sudden drop, drop of an occasional acorn among the fallen leaves; or making merry with the child, as a healthy, innocent, playful child always can make good women merry.

Still, Master Henry was not a remarkable specimen of infanthood, and had never occupied more than his proper nepotal corner in Hilary’s heart.  She left him chiefly to Elizabeth, and to his aunt Johanna, in whom the grandmotherly character had blossomed out in full perfection.  And when these two became engrossed in his infant majesty.  Hilary sat a little apart, unconsciously folding her hands and fixing her eyes on vacancy; becoming fearfully alive to the sharp truth, that of all griefs, a strong love unreturned or unfulfilled is the grief which most blights a woman’s life.  Say, rather, any human life; but it is worst to a woman, because she must necessarily endure passively.  So enduring, it is very difficult to recognize the good hand of God therein.  Why should He ordain longings, neither selfish nor unholy, which yet are never granted; tenderness which expends itself in vain; sacrifices which are wholly unheeded; and sufferings which seem quite thrown away?  That is, if we dared allege of any thing in the moral or in the material world, where so much loveliness, so much love, appear continually wasted, that it is really “thrown away.”  We never know through what divine mysteries of compensation the Great Father of the universe may be carrying out his sublime plan; and those three words, “God is love,” ought to contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all things.

As Hilary rose from under the tree there was a shadow on her sweet face, a listless weariness in her movements, which caught Johanna’s attention.  Johanna had been very good to her child.  When, do what she would, Hilary could not keep down fits of occasional dullness or impatience, it was touching to see how this woman of over sixty years slipped from her due pedestal of honor and dignity, to be patient with her younger sister’s unspoken bitterness and incommunicable care.

She now, seeing how restless Hilary was, rose when she rose, put her arm in hers, and accompanied her, speaking or silent, with quick steps or slow, as she chose, across the beautiful park, than which, perhaps, all England can not furnish a scene more thoroughly sylvan, thoroughly English.  They rested on that high ground near the gate of Pembroke Lodge, where the valley of the Thames lies spread out like a map, stretching miles and miles away in luxuriant greenery.