“I wonder,” said Lilias, “whether our minds are formed, Helen, to suit our fate? I mean that our griefs are made for us, like our dwellings, with an individual fitness in them all. It seems so strange sometimes, as if on one person had fallen the fate which properly belonged to another; yet it must be that we are suited always--our minds with our trials.” “It must be,” said the bolder Helen, “for what would be joy to one is nothing to another, Lilias. I think I could fancy what my troubles would be, and yours?” “Tell me, Helen.” “Calm, grave, quiet sorrows, which will not have the fever of doubt and hope in them, which you will know certainly, and be able to weep silent tears for. Lilias, I think these will be yours; and for me--I do not know--I think strong troubles that I can fight and battle with; unquiet, living griefs that will keep me strained and labouring. Lilias, is it not my foolish fancies that make you sad?” “No. I do not see the sun just now, that is all,” said the pale calm Lilias, shutting the eyes which were again full. “Helen, Helen, let us not say any more.” CHAPTER III. “Concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, Preyed on her damask cheek.”--TWELFTH NIGHT. The good Mossgray was pained for the dimness which hung about his adopted child. It was not positive sorrow--it was only a shadowy quietness as of a cloud, and very still and patient was Lilias. She was trying to live in the present only, because the future, when she tried to look upon it, made her heart sick; but it is not in the nature of humanity to do this, and her effort to confine herself to those individual hours, as one by one in their quietness they glided past her, made her only languidly indifferent to them all. For Lilias was alone: the hope in peril was her sole hope; kindly ties of kindred there were none for her, and except the old man, her guardian, to whom she looked with tenderness and reverence as to a father, but who yet was not her father, nor had part in all the associations of the past as members of one family have, she had none in the world but this one--and he!-- Where was he? was it peril or illness, or, painfullest of all, was it change, which produced this agony of silence? She tried to interdict herself from the constant speculation to which she could give no answer, but the yearning wonder and anxiety were too strong for the sorrowful heart; yet she said nothing. She could not blame him; she could not have another fancy that on his truth there lay the faintest suspicion; and with that haze of mild, subdued patience about her, she waited, and when she did think of the future time at all, thought of what lay beyond that fated, solemn day, on which tidings might and surely _must_ come, as of some dreamy, unknown chaos, strange and chill, another life. “I dinna ken what’s come to Miss Lillie,” said Mrs Mense, with a sigh. “She’s ower muckle made o’, that’s it,” responded the sourer Janet.