Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/26

24 the forgetfulness of the dead, seems like profanation of their sad and sacred memory. Lord Norbourne, too, was touched by the confidence reposed in him. He knew Lord Marehmont, and felt how utterly his wife was thrown away upon him; and yet it was a sort of unhappiness to which it was impossible to allude, and still more impossible to redress. "Yet who would believe," exclaimed he, half thinking, aloud, " to see you sometimes so brilliant, and, seemingly, so gay, that the envied and flattered Lady Marchmont knew the bitterness of regret, or the darkness of despondency?"

"Ah," replied she, "life is very inconsistent. We contradict each other; still more do we contradict ourselves. It seems to me as if there were a perpetual warfare going on between the outward and the inner world. Nothing is really what it appears to be; and this is what discourages me more than I can express—the not knowing to what I may trust, and my utter inability to discern between that which is; and that which only seems."