"I don't know what is the matter with me to-day," she thought. "I seem to have grown sick of my life all at once; and if I am ever so tired, I must go on living just the same. It is not every body who can die at a moment's notice, like Shelley's Ginevra." Miss Crawford sighed heavily for the second time, and turned to the book-shelves near her with an impatient gesture. "I don't suppose there is a creature in this world whose life will bear thinking about," she said. "What is it that dreadful person in the play says? 'These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will make us mad!' I'm sure _my_ life has been all hurry and excitement ever since I left school--one perpetual contest with other girls, as to which of us should wear the best dresses, and know the nicest people, and go to most parties. I sometimes think things might have happened differently if I had had time to think and had been less influenced by other girls." She took a book from one of the shelves haphazard; but there is a Nemesis who governs and pervades the trifles of every-day life. The book on which Miss Crawford's careless hand happened to fall was a volume of the Waverley novels, containing _The Bride of Lammermoor_; and in the mind of a young lady who is about to make a mercenary marriage that sad story is likely to awaken painful ideas. Poor old George III. had a fancy to read Shakespeare's _Lear_ at that time when he, like the legendary monarch, was old and distraught; and his physicians ordered that the pitiful tragedy should be kept from his hands; but the king was wiser than his medical attendants, and knew where to find the play in spite of them. He asked for Colman's Dramatic Works, which his unsuspecting servants willingly gave him, and amongst which he knew there was the modern playwright's adaptation of the grand old play. He read the tragedy, and was found by his daughters weeping. "I am like poor Lear," he said piteously; "but I have no Goneril and Regan--only two Cordelias." One can fancy the scene a touching one, and the king's daughters melted into tears that were not entirely bitter as they bent over the sorrowful old man, amidst whose madness there was so much wisdom. Flo turned the leaves of Sir Walter's masterpiece listlessly at first; but who can read half-a-dozen pages of that wondrous story and not be interested? The sweet romance was very familiar to her; but she read on, charmed anew by the sad tender record of an "o'er true tale." She read on till her tears fell fast, and a vague sense of her own disquietudes seemed strangely blended with the sorrows of Lucy Ashton. She sat reading till her father's step on the tiled floor of the conservatory startled her from her abstraction. "Are you all alone, my darling?" asked the painter tenderly, as his daughter laid aside her book, and rose to greet him. "Yes, papa; I have been alone all day." "But where is Aunt Jane?"