When Kate O'Donoghue entered the room, Herbert was seated before a table, on which his head was leaning, with his hands pressed against his face. At his feet lay his cap, and the books he carried with him from the Hall. Unconscious of her presence, lost to every thing, save his overwhelming affliction, the sobs came with a convulsive shudder that shook his frame, and made the very table rattle, while at intervals there broke from him a faint moan of heart-rending sorrow. [Illustration: 284] “My dear brother,” said Kate, placing her arm around his neck. The boy started and looked up, and prepared as she was to see the traces of suffering there, she started at the ravages long days and nights of study and deep grief had left behind them: his eyes were sunk, and surrounded by dark circles, that made them seem quite buried beneath his brows; his forehead traversed by a net-work of blue veins, had that transparent thinness mental labour impresses, and his lips were thin and colourless; while on each cheek a burning spot of red looked like the mark of hectic. He made no answer; but the tears ran fast from his eyes, and his mouth quivered as he tried to say something. She sat down beside him on the same chair, and bending her head, till the silken curls touched his very cheek, she spoke to him--not in words of encouragement or good cheer, for such her own instinct told her were inapplicable, but in the soft accents of affection, neither undervaluing the source of his grief, nor yet suffering him to be carried away by his own sense of his calamity. “Remember, my dear brother,” said she, “you are not less dear to our hearts for all this--remember that for the casualties of the world, and its chances, we can only do our utmost--that success is not for us to determine, but to strive for. Had you won to-day, some other must now have grieved like you, and who can tell if he could count as many fond and loving hearts to feel for and console him.” “Oh, if you knew how I strived and longed--how I prayed for success,” said he, in a voice almost stifled by convulsive throbs.