It was not sullenness, reader; it was no gloomy bitterness of spirit; it was no impatience of the ills that are the lot of all; it was no rebellions murmuring against the will of God: neither was it madness, nor anything like it, though she acted sometimes strangely, and sometimes wildly, as it seemed to the common eyes of the world, from a strong and energetic determination of accomplishing her object at the time, joined with the utter want of that experience of the world which would have taught her how to accomplish it by ordinary means. What was it then? you will ask, and may think it strange when I say--_memory_. But so it was: memory, confused and vague, of things long gone before, which formed so strong a contrast with the present, that whenever sorrow or disappointment fell upon her, some former time, some distant scenes of which she knew not the when nor the where, rose up before her eyes, and made even herself believe that she was mad. She recollected bright looks and kind words, and days of happiness and nights of peace and repose, to which she could not give "a local habitation and a name." Were they visions? she asked herself; were they dreams? where could they have occurred? what could they have been? Was it from some book which she had read, she often inquired, that such fanciful pictures had been gleaned, and had then fixed themselves as realities in her mind? She could not tell; but when such memories rose up, they took possession of her wholly--bewildered, confused, overpowered her. For a time she was a creature of the past; she scarcely believed in the present; she knew not which was the reality--the things gone by, or the things that surrounded her. During the whole time that she remained at Coventry, this cloud was upon her, and she paid little attention to anything but the continual questioning of her own heart and mind. She attempted, as we have said, to escape--indeed, more than once; but it was by impulse rather than by thought; and when frustrated, she fell at once back again into meditation. She did not remark that Dry treated her in a very different manner from that which he had ever displayed towards her before; that he called her "Mistress Arrah;" that he tried to soothe and to amuse her. She noticed, but without much attention, that different clothing had been provided for her from that which she had been accustomed to wear; but whenever her mind turned from the past towards the present again, her thoughts busied themselves with Charles Walton and his sister, and she would have given worlds to know how it fared with those she loved. That the victory had been won by the Cavaliers she was aware, but at what price it had been bought she could not tell, and she trembled to think of it. No one, indeed, spoke to her upon the subject; for Dry was silent, and for reasons of his own, he took care that she should be visited by none but the landlady of the inn.