“Fanny,” said Lady Selina, in a voice which was intended to be both severe and sorrowful, “you are giving way to very foolish feelings in a very foolish way; you are preparing great unhappiness for yourself, and allowing your mind to waste itself in uncontrolled sorrow in a manner—­in a manner which cannot but be ruinously injurious.  My dear Fanny, why don’t you do something?—­why don’t you occupy yourself?  You’ve given up your work; you’ve given up your music; you’ve given up everything in the shape of reading; how long, Fanny, will you go on in this sad manner?” Lady Selina paused, but, as Fanny did not immediately reply, she continued her speech “I’ve begged you to go on with your reading, because nothing but mental employment will restore your mind to its proper tone.  I’m sure I’ve brought you the second volume of Gibbon twenty times, but I don’t believe you’ve read a chapter this month back.  How long will you allow yourself to go on in this sad manner?”

“Not long, Selina.  As you say, I’m sad enough.”

“But is it becoming in you, Fanny, to grieve in this way for a man whom you yourself rejected because he was unworthy of you?”

“Selina, I’ve told you before that such was not the case.  I believe him to be perfectly worthy of me, and of any one much my superior too.”

“But you did reject him, Fanny:  you bade papa tell him to discontinue his visits—­didn’t you?”

Fanny felt that her cousin was taking an unfair advantage in throwing thus in her teeth her own momentary folly in having been partly persuaded, partly piqued, into quarrelling with her lover; and she resented it as such.  “If I did,” she said, somewhat angrily, “it does not make my grief any lighter, to know that I brought it on myself.”

“No, Fanny; but it should show you that the loss for which you grieve is past recovery.  Sorrow, for which there is no cure, should cease to be grieved for, at any rate openly.  If Lord Ballindine were to die you would not allow his death to doom you to perpetual sighs, and perpetual inactivity.  No; you’d then know that grief was hopeless, and you’d recover.”

“But Lord Ballindine is not dead,” said Fanny.

“Ah! that’s just the point,” continued her ladyship; “he should be dead to you; to you he should now be just the same as though he were in his grave.  You loved him some time since, and accepted him; but you found your love misplaced,—­unreturned, or at any rate coldly returned.  Though you loved him, you passed a deliberate judgment on him, and wisely rejected him.  Having done so, his name should not be on your lips; his form and figure should be forgotten.  No thoughts of him should sully your mind, no love for him should be permitted to rest in your heart; it should be rooted out, whatever the exertion may cost you.”

“Selina, I believe you have no heart yourself.”

“Perhaps as much as yourself, Fanny.  I’ve heard of some people who were said to be all heart; I flatter myself I am not one of them.  I trust I have some mind, to regulate my heart; and some conscience, to prevent my sacrificing my duties for the sake of my heart.”