To the Ormesby family the poor artist was an object of such utter insignificance that they never dreamed of attributing Hester’s sudden relapse to the news of his melancholy fate. A long fit of illness left her listless and inert, and giving herself up entirely to the guidance of her romantic nature, she withdrew entirely from society. The more she reflected upon the past, the more she was confirmed in the belief of Legard’s attachment to her. His words, his manners, and, above all, the wretched countenance which he wore on the day of her bridal, all convinced her of his love; while an acute sense of his poverty and his personal defects, together with his probable belief in Hester’s attachment to the man to whom she had been betrothed, seemed to her sufficient reasons for his silence and reserve. She became cold, abstracted and indifferent to every thing. Life seemed to her one long dream, and her days were passed in that vague reverie which is as pernicious to the mind as the habitual opium draught to the body. Fifteen years were passed in this aimless, useless kind of existence. She walked amid shadows, a quiet, harmless being, mechanically performing the common duties of life, even as a hired laborer, who toils rather to finish the day than to complete his work. The dream of her youth became a sort of monomania; the one subject on which her mind was unsound and unsettled; while the epithet of “eccentric,” which is so often used to cover a multitude of errors, was here applied to a single weakness. That dream was destined to be rudely broken; but the strings of her gentle heart—that delicate instrument on which fancy had so long played a mournful melody—were destined to be broken with it.