Such grief may be conceived better than it can be described, as is
well known to those who have experienced it. But Mary Avenel had been
taught by the peculiarity of her situation, to regard herself as the
Child of Destiny; and the melancholy and reflecting turn of her
disposition gave to her sorrows a depth and breadth peculiar to her
character. The grave--and it was a bloody grave--had closed, as she
believed, over the youth to whom she was secretly, but most warmly
attached; the force and ardour of Halbert's character bearing a
singular correspondence to the energy of which her own was capable.
Her sorrow did not exhaust itself in sighs and tears, but when the
first shock had passed away, concentrated itself with deep and steady
meditation, to collect and calculate, like a ba
