Page:Ethel Churchill 1.pdf/283

Rh know such keen enjoyment: yet this first lesson is but the type of all that are to come. Throughout our weary pilgrimage we are duped and betrayed! One hope after another dies away like a star in the dim chill light of morning and reality. Our feelings are exhausted; our memory stored with images of pain. Our mistress deceived us at first, and our friends have gone and done likewise. Tired and embittered, we take refuge in a harsh indifference; the dust of the highway is upon us, and the heart becomes its own tomb. All the better part of us has gone down to the grave, while we sit wearily by its side, the wan shadows of what once we were. Life, after all its fever and struggle, has only one dark hope left; and that hope, is death!" The old man's voice sank, like a knell, amid the stillness of that gloomy chamber, and he sank back fatigued in his Gothic seat, the very image of the desolate old age he had painted. While Ethel, who sat cowering by the hearth, was equally the image of youthful