Everything is very still. Edith sits silently at the window of her dressing-room, watching that lovely dawn. Presently a few starlings appear on the frosty slopes, with their quick, impatient gestures and rapid movements, seeking a breakfast. A pair of beautiful blackbirds droop their jetty wings, and seem numbed with cold. A robin, cheerful even in adversity, trills a few grateful notes on a shrub near the window, and Edith thinks that no new-year’s serenade could be half as touching as that low, sweet song. She thinks, too, what a lesson it teaches; for her melancholy eye had been straying mournfully over the broad lands stretching far and wide before her, and--“’tis an old tale, and often told,”--she had almost envied the humblest cottager in those her lordly possessions. “Farewell, old year!” she exclaimed; “none other will ever dawn upon me as you did. May the new bear happiness and joy to many! Oh, Marion! you little thought how desolate I am, when you prophesied that there was yet much in store for me.” Marion’s picturesque cottage could be plainly seen in the distance, shut in by the blue range of hills above, and sheltered with sweeping larches. The morning sun now shone brightly upon it, and Edith pictured to herself the beaming, happy countenance of her friend. “May God bless you, Marion!” she continued with emotion; “for to the example of your gentle goodness I owe all that is now left me,--the knowledge of that usefulness, that patient love and forbearance, which makes you so dear to others, so happy in yourself, and without which all that the world calls beauty and talent is hollow and heartless indeed! You taught me the value of true affection--the folly and littleness of the false pride I rejoiced in; and yet so sweetly, that I was only humbled to myself--not to you. Would that it had been but a few short months before! Oh, Percy! how willingly would I now confess myself in the wrong! But now I am forgotten! In your benevolent plans, in your honourable successes, there is no thought of me; or I am only remembered as a wilful, imperious woman, whom you once foolishly loved. I shall never see you again--mine the sorrow, mine the fault! But I am earning the right to self-esteem; I am doing all that I believe you would approve of, did you care for me now.”