What was there to live for now? she asked herself again and again. Was life to be only a dreary blank--a struggle for mere existence? And then she blamed herself for her folly and ambition. Had Arthur Sterne never crossed the light of her life she could have patiently toiled on, never wearying of the plaints of her mother; but now, after months, almost years of hopefulness, to come to this! Well might the sleep be fitful, and the dreams those which brought trouble, for the sun of her life seemed clouded, and hope a thing of the past. Again a sigh, and a few muttered words, and then the weary head was turned a little so that when the first grey dawn of the coming day crept down the court, and struggled into the room, driving forth shadow after shadow, it rested smilingly upon Lucy's cheek, pausing lovingly upon the first pure thing it had encountered that morning in the misery-smitten region around. Had Arthur Sterne known all, he would have given position, advancement, all, to have pressed his lips where the pale light now rested, and asked for pardon. But he knew only that which he had seen, and, racked by suspicion, he wearied himself with doubt and surmise without end. Again a sigh, and again a restless turn, when the colour flushed through Lucy's pale cheeks. It was sunrise, and some hopeful thoughts must have come with its brightness; or was it that the words breathed far off above the rushing river had at length reached their goal? But the cheeks soon paled again, the sigh was repeated, and Lucy slept heavily. "Tsu weet, tsu weet, tsweet, tsweet, tsweet!" sang in long and joyous trill the speckled-breasted lark, as, raising its crest and the plumage of its throat, it fluttered by the prison-bars, and poured forth that joyous song whose every note told of bright skies, pure air, and the daisy-sprinkled mead; of waving cornfields, rippling brooks, and many-tinted woods. "Tsweet, tsweet, tsweet!" sang the bird of the joyous heart-stirring song, prisoned here in a foul court, but panting for the elastic air and some loving mate.