Sara Davenal was stunned: stunned with the weight of the calamity, with the grief it brought. And yet it probably fell upon her with less startling intensity than it would have done had she been in the full suntide of prosperity. She had been recently living in nothing but sorrow. The grief and terror brought to her by that night's unhappy secret (which you now know was connected with her brother), had been succeeded by the withdrawal of the friendship--to call it by a light name--of Oswald Cray. She had believed that the world could bring no other calamity that could add to her misery: she had not thought of that most grievous one--a father's death. In all pain there must be a reaction: the very violence of the first grief induces it; and it came sooner to Sara Davenal than it does to most sufferers. Or, it may be, that the grave, the _real_ nature of the grief brought its own effects. Had it been simple mourning alone, the natural sorrow for the loss of a good and loving father, she might have gone on weeping for months: but there was behind it that heritage of terror on her brother's account, there was the consciousness that with her the heavy secret was left, and the completion of its purchase. The blinding tears ceased, the lively grief settled down into one long, inward, dull agony; and ere many days went over, she had become, in manner, almost unnaturally cold and calm. "How well his daughter bears it," the town said, when it had an opportunity of seeing her. In her subdued manner, her still face, her low measured tones which never trembled, they read only serene resignation. Ah! how few of us think to remember in everyday life that it is the silent grief that does its work within.