For, though it may be sweeter to love, than to be loved, yet it is hard always to give and never to receive in return; and when Jane died, Rachel knew well enough that all the love she had to receive upon earth, had been given unto her. Like the lost Pleiad, "seen no more below," the bright star of her life had left the sky. It burned in other heavens with more celestial light; but it shone no longer over her path--to cheer, to comfort, to illume. Mrs. Gray was kind; after her own fashion, she loved Rachel. They had grieved and suffered together from the same sorrows, and kindred griefs can bind the farthest hearts; but beyond this there was no sympathy between them, and Mrs. Gray's affection, such as it was, was free from a particle of tenderness. She was not naturally a patient or an amiable woman; and she had endured great and unmerited wrongs from Rachel's father. Perhaps, she would have been more than human, had she not occasionally reminded her step-daughter of Mr. Thomas Gray's misdeeds, and now and then taunted her with a "He never cared about you--you know." Aye--Rachel knew it well enough. She knew that her own father loved her not--that though he had cared little for Jane, not being a tender-hearted man, still that he had cared somewhat, for that younger, and more favoured child. That before he left England, he would occasionally caress her; that when she died, tears had flowed down his stern cheek on hearing the tidings, and that the words had escaped him: "I am sorry I was not there." All this Rachel knew. Her mind was too noble, and too firm for jealousy; her heart too pious, and too humble for rebellious sorrow; but yet she found it hard to bear, and very hard to be reminded of it as a reproach and a shame. Was it not enough that she could not win the affection she most longed for? She was devoted to her step-mother; she had fondly loved her younger sister; but earlier born in her heart than these two loves, deeper, and more solemn, was the love Rachel felt for her father. That instinct of nature, which in him was silent, in her spoke strongly. That share of love which he denied her, she silently added to her own, and united both in one fervent offering. Harshness and indifference had no power to quench a feeling, to which love in kindness had not given birth. She loved because it was her destiny; because, as she once said herself, when speaking of another: "A daughter's heart clings to her father with boundless charity."