Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/4

2 ; and the bubbles, weeds and flowers, danced on the surface: few cared to look on the rock and the darkness below. Every one appeared to be doing precisely the same things that were doing at that very time the year before. The streets were filled with carriages, the Mall with a gay crowd; the talk was ot fêtes and visits; and eyes and diamonds seemed equally bright. The spring had come forth in all its beauty, and the flower was in the grass, and the green leaf on the bough. Change is slow and strange in the social and the natural world, it requires some great convulsion to alter the aspect of either; but, in the hidden and inward world,—there it is that change does its work; we marvel to find how ourselves are altered, while every thing seems to have remained the same around us; but decay always begins at the heart. Mrs. Churchill being settled in London, Ethel had come out as a beauty and an heiress, and was brilliantly successful in both capacities. Sir Robert had remitted the fine; but flatteries, executed with whatever genius,