I know not how I reached my room; quietly and simply, I suppose; for when I recovered from this transport of indignant passion, I was lying on my bed and I was alone. I did not weep, I did not moan, I scarcely thought, but I drank deep of the cup of grief which had so suddenly risen to my lips. In youth we do not love sorrow, but when it comes to us we welcome it with strange avidity; there is a luxury, a dreary charm in the first excess of woe. True, we quickly sicken of the bitter draught; I had lain down with the feeling--"There, I am now as miserable as I can be, and yet I care not!" but, alas! how soon I grew faint and weary! how soon from the depths of my wrung heart I cried for relief to Him who knew my innocence, who had never wronged me, who, were I ever so guilty, would have never condemned me unheard! What was it to me that Cornelius left me his love and his kindness, when I knew and felt, with a keener bitterness than words can convey, that I had for ever lost his esteem? Did I, could I, care for an affection from which the very life had departed? No; child as I was in years, something within me revolted from the mere thought of his tenderness and endearments. If he believed me guilty, then let him hate and detest me: sweeter would be his aversion than such fondness as he could bestow on one whom, the more he forgave her, the more he must despise. This resentful feeling--better to be hated than weakly loved--bore with it no consolation. I still groaned under the intolerable load of so much misery. Spirit and flesh both revolted against it, and said it was beyond endurance; that, anything save that, I would bear cheerfully, but that I could not bear; that sickness would be pleasant, and death itself would be sweet in comparison. And as I thought thus, I remembered the time when I was near dying, when Cornelius wept over me, and I should have carried in my grave his regard as well as his tears, and I passionately questioned the Providence that rules our fate. I asked why I had been spared for this? why I was thought guilty when I was innocent? why Cornelius disbelieved me? why there was no hope that I should ever be acquitted by him? why the only being for whose good opinion I would have given all it was mine to give, had been the very one to condemn me? Had I looked into my heart, I might there have found the stern reply--"By his idol let the idolater perish." But I did not. I only dwelt on the galling fact, that though guiltless, there was no hope for me, and I sank into as violent a fit of despair as if this were a new discovery. I wept passionately at first, then slowly, unconsciously. My head ached; my heavy eyes closed; I did not sleep, but I sank into the apathy of subdued grief. I know not how long I had been thus when the door opened, and Kate--I knew her step--entered. She came up to my bed, bent over me, and seeing my eyes closed, whispered-- "Are you asleep, Daisy?"