“We must wait, Lilias,” she said. “It is very hard, very hard to do it, I know, but it is in God’s hands, and we must wait.” Lilias put up her hands to her head; she staggered as she withdrew from her support. A sickly smile came upon her face. “I ought to go to his mother, Helen. Will you come with me to seek his mother? Mossgray is very good, very kind, but she has more need of me. She has not written, because she would think, like me, that he was dead; but it may be true. You have heard of very wonderful deliverances. You said so, Helen; you thought it might be true.” But Helen’s head drooped. She feared to encourage the expectation. Lilias sat down upon her low chair again, and again bent her head upon her knees; her feeble frame was distracted with bodily pains no less than her mind was with mental. “I think my head is dizzy, Helen,” she said, in her melancholy, broken voice. “I think I am forgetting myself--for this is only vain and false, a mockery of hope. I see it is. If the grief were yours, Helen, you would see that this could not be true.” Those strange artifices of misery! they brought tears to the eyes of the looker-on, to whom this did indeed seem a mockery of hope. “You must stay with her, Helen,” said Mossgray, when they had left Lilias alone. “You must stay with her till I return. I cannot leave Fendie to-night, but to-morrow evening I will. I will go to London, and ascertain at once if there is any truth in this. Do not let Lilias know where I am nor what is my errand. I leave her with you in all confidence, Helen. You will be tender of my poor Lily.” CHAPTER X. I do not hope--ah, no!--mine eyes are clear, I see it would be vain; perchance, perchance, Some other heart doth hope and will be blessed; But mine--why should this gladness come to mine? I have been used with grief; A sombre way has mine been, all my days, And yet perchance--oh, Heaven, such things might be! As that one giant joy should come to me, Eclipsing common joys.--OLD PLAY. “Helen,” said Lilias, “do you think I am very weak?” They were sitting alone together on the morning of the third day after Mossgray’s departure. It was early, and Helen was just preparing to return to the daily labours which she could not intermit. “I think you have had great trouble, Lilias, and you are not strong; but why do you ask me?” “Helen,” said the pale Lilias, “do you never think it is selfish to sink under this blow as I have done? I think it has sometimes come into your mind; _you_ would not have done it, Helen?” “We are not alike,” said Helen, hurriedly. “I think I should have rebelled, I should have repined. I should have been like the Leonore of that ghastly ballad; but I have my daily work to battle with, and little cares and little humiliations to teach me patience--yet I will never be so patient as you are, Lilias.”