Nevertheless, winter after winter found them established once more, over their peaceful embroidery, at Holyrood; beautiful and merry and unchanged as ever--all but one. Mary Hamilton, though she still showed the same unbounded devotion to her mistress, the same sweetness of disposition towards her companions was cruelly altered now. It is very sad to read in any human face the unerring symptoms of a broken heart; to watch the eye sinking, the cheek falling, and the lines about the mouth deepening day by day; to note the listless step, the morbid craving for solitude, the painful shrinking from all that is bright and beautiful--from a strain of sweet music, a gleam of spring sunshine, or the laugh of a happy child, as the aching eye shrinks from light, and, above all, the dreary smile that seems to protest patiently against the torture, while the sufferer is kind and forgiving still. We are almost tempted to ask, why should there be such sorrow here on earth? But we are satisfied and reassured, recalling a certain pledge that cannot deceive, remembering who it was that declared in mercy and sympathy--‘Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.’ Her companions could not fail to notice the change that was thus wasting the very existence of their favourite, and each, in her own way, strove to show her fellow-feeling and her concern. Mary Carmichael was, perhaps, the least demonstrative of the three; but this young lady had of late been extremely engrossed with her own affairs, and seemed to acquire additional hardness of character and reserve of demeanour day by day. Her interviews with the stranger in the Abbey-garden, always clandestine, and always affectionate, took place at regular intervals; and she seldom saw Walter Maxwell now, avoiding, indeed, every occasion of meeting him, and treating him, when they did happen to be together, with a coldness and displeasure, which he was the last man on earth to accept with resignation, and which was gradually, but surely, estranging his affection from her altogether. He did not see the longing looks that followed him when his back was turned; he did not hear the sigh that rose so wearily to her lips when she was alone; he only thought her fickle, heartless, ungenerous, and unjust, determined to have nothing more to do with her, felt hurt and angry, yet very much ashamed of himself for entertaining either of these sentiments on her account.