To avoid any farther unpleasantness, she then took leave of her late friends, and, with a very heavy heart, returned to Smatterton to make immediate preparation for her journey to London. Alas! poor girl, she was not in a frame of mind favourable to the purposes of festivity or the notes of gladness. She, in whose heart was no gladness, was expected to be the means of delighting others. Thus does it happen, that the tears of one are the smiles of another, and the pleasures of mankind are founded in each others pains. Never do the burning words and breathing thoughts of poetry spring with such powerful energy and sympathy-commanding force, as when they come from a heart that has felt the bitterness of grief, and that has been agitated even unto bursting. Our heroine would then have appeared to the greatest advantage, and would then have commanded the deepest sympathy in those moments of solitude, which intervened between the last leave-taking and her departure for a metropolis of which she had seen nothing, heard much, and thought little. But now her mind was on the rack of thought, and so deeply and painfully was it impressed, that her feeling was of the absolute impossibility of effectually answering the designs and intentions of her friend the Countess. She could not bear to look back to the days that were past--she felt an indescribable reluctance to look forward, but her mind was of necessity forced in that direction. All that spirit of independence and feeling of almost pride, which formed no small part of her character, seemed now to have taken flight, and to have left her a humble, destitute, helpless creature. It was a pretty conceit that came into her head, and though it was sorrowful she smiled at it; for she thought that her end would be swanlike, and that her first song would be her last, with which she should expire while its notes were trembling on her lips. CHAPTER XI.