Page:Ethel Churchill 1.pdf/54

48 the path by which she came, and was soon out of sight. "She is a sweet creature, and a lovely," said Mrs. Churchill: "I wish she may bring back the same light step and heart with which she leaves us." Mrs. Churchill was not the first person who has been deceived by appearances. The light step there assuredly was—but the light heart, Henrietta herself would have said was a heavy one. With spirits exhausted by the forced exertion of the last hour, she came back to her room even more gloomy than when she left it. "I have seen him for the last time:"—and perhaps that moment was the only one during their whole acquaintance, that she had thought of Walter Maynard with unmixed tenderness. Pride, mortification, and disdain of his actual position, had usually mingled with all gentler thoughts. But there is something in parting that softens the heart;—it is as if we had never felt how unutterably dear a beloved object could be, till we are about to lose it for ever. Unconsciously to herself, she had grown accustomed to see Walter Maynard, to note the