not over for her because her sweet hopes had been frustrated.  The wound had been deep and very sore, but the flesh of the patient had been sound and healthy, and her blood pure.  A physician having knowledge in such cases would have declared, after long watching of her symptoms, that a cure was probable.  Her mother was the physician who watched her with the closest eyes; and she, though she was sometimes driven to doubt, did hope, with stronger hope from day to day, that her child might live to remember the story of her love without abiding agony.

That nobody should talk to her about it,—­that had been the one stipulation which she had seemed to make, not sending forth a request to that effect among her friends in so many words, but showing by certain signs that such was her stipulation.  A word to that effect she had spoken to her uncle,—­as may be remembered, which word had been regarded with the closest obedience.  She had gone out into her little world very soon after the news of Crosbie’s falsehood had reached her,—­first to church and then among the people of the village, resolving to carry herself as though no crushing weight had fallen upon her.  The village people had understood it all, listening to her and answering her without the proffer of any outspoken parley.

“Lord bless ’ee,” said Mrs Crump, the postmistress,—­and Mrs Crump was supposed to have the sourest temper in Allington,—­“whenever I look at thee, Miss Lily, I thinks that surely thee is the beautifulest young ’ooman in all these parts.”

“And you are the crossest old woman,” said Lily, laughing, and giving her hand to the postmistress.

“So I be,” said Mrs Crump.  “So I be.”  Then Lily sat down in the cottage and asked after her ailments.  With Mrs Hearn it was the same.  Mrs Hearn, after that first meeting which has been already mentioned, petted and caressed her, but spoke no further word of her misfortune.  When Lily called a second time upon Mrs Boyce, which she did boldly by herself, that lady did begin one other word of commiseration.  “My dearest Lily, we have all been made so unhappy—­” So far Mrs Boyce got, sitting close to Lily and striving to look into her face; but Lily, with a slightly heightened colour, turned sharp round upon one of the Boyce girls, tearing Mrs Boyce’s commiseration into the smallest shreds.  “Minnie,” she said, speaking quite loud, almost with girlish ecstasy, “what do you think Tartar did yesterday?  I never laughed so much in my life.”  Then she told a ludicrous story about a very ugly terrier which belonged to the squire.  After that even Mrs Boyce made no further attempt.  Mrs Dale and Bell both understood that such was to be the rule,—­the rule even to them.  Lily would speak to them occasionally on the matter,—­to one of them at a time, beginning with some almost single word of melancholy resignation, and then would go on till she opened her very bosom before them; but no such conversation was ever begun by them.  But now, in these busy days of the packing, that topic seemed to have been banished altogether.