The six sisters of the valleys : an historical romance - University Library

THE ENVOY". 31
In vain did his reason warn liim of the
treacherous nature of his thoughts, con-
sidering the difference of then positions and
creeds. The heart is an eloquent sophist
—
yea, a thoughtless suicide—and will indulge
the pleasurable dreams of the present,
though it may thereby enhance its future
sorrows. He could not forget her, yet
he hardly dare cherish the hope that
she had remembered him. The scenes of
grief in which they had met would be
enough to stifle all other feelings, and it
appeared blasphemy to think of love over
the corpse of a mother or amid the desola-
tion of a home.
E chard was startled from his reverie
by the distant sound of a human voice.
He listened ; it seemed to him like the wail
of a woman. It must be one of the scat-
tered family weeping upon then ravaged
home; it might be her whose imasre'Twas
engraven upon his troubled heart.