Here Lorna broke down for awhile, and cried so very piteously, that doubting of my knowledge, and of any power to comfort, I did my best to hold my peace, and tried to look very cheerful.  Then thinking that might be bad manners, I went to wipe her eyes for her.

[Illustration:  162.jpg I went to wipe her eyes]

“Master Ridd,” she began again, “I am both ashamed and vexed at my own childish folly.  But you, who have a mother, who thinks (you say) so much of you, and sisters, and a quiet home; you cannot tell (it is not likely) what a lonely nature is.  How it leaps in mirth sometimes, with only heaven touching it; and how it falls away desponding, when the dreary weight creeps on.

“It does not happen many times that I give way like this; more shame now to do so, when I ought to entertain you.  Sometimes I am so full of anger, that I dare not trust to speech, at things they cannot hide from me; and perhaps you would be much surprised that reckless men would care so much to elude a young girl’s knowledge.  They used to boast to Aunt Sabina of pillage and of cruelty, on purpose to enrage her; but they never boast to me.  It even makes me smile sometimes to see how awkwardly they come and offer for temptation to me shining packets, half concealed, of ornaments and finery, of rings, or chains, or jewels, lately belonging to other people.

[Illustration:  163.jpg Jewels lately belonging to others]

“But when I try to search the past, to get a sense of what befell me ere my own perception formed; to feel back for the lines of childhood, as a trace of gossamer, then I only know that nought lives longer than God wills it.  So may after sin go by, for we are children always, as the Counsellor has told me; so may we, beyond the clouds, seek this infancy of life, and never find its memory.

“But I am talking now of things which never come across me when any work is toward.  It might have been a good thing for me to have had a father to beat these rovings out of me; or a mother to make a home, and teach me how to manage it.  For, being left with none—­I think; and nothing ever comes of it.  Nothing, I mean, which I can grasp and have with any surety; nothing but faint images, and wonderment, and wandering.  But often, when I am neither searching back into remembrance, nor asking of my parents, but occupied by trifles, something like a sign, or message, or a token of some meaning, seems to glance upon me.  Whether from the rustling wind, or sound of distant music, or the singing of a bird, like the sun on snow it strikes me with a pain of pleasure.

“And often when I wake at night, and listen to the silence, or wander far from people in the grayness of the evening, or stand and look at quiet water having shadows over it, some vague image seems to hover on the skirt of vision, ever changing place and outline, ever flitting as I follow.  This so moves and hurries me, in the eagerness and longing, that straightway all my chance is lost; and memory, scared like a wild bird, flies.  Or am I as a child perhaps, chasing a flown cageling, who among the branches free plays and peeps at the offered cage (as a home not to be urged on him), and means to take his time of coming, if he comes at all?