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88 alludes to the expression than to the emotion. Words and tears exhaust themselves—and certainly Lucy indulged amply in both. She was one of those timid and dependent tempers to whom weeping is natural; in all emergencies, great or small, her resource, if not remedy, was to cry. To such a one, sympathy is the first relief—confession half transferred the responsibility of the thoughts confessed to the hearer; and the extent of her regret was unconsciously measured by what she was expected to feel. Bodily fatigue soon follows upon the burst of sobs and the passionate exclamation; rest must follow, and the repose soon be comes physical as well as mental. Despair is unnatural; and the powers of Time, the comforter, can scarcely be exaggerated; but the agency by which he works is exhaustion.

There is a grief which may darken a whole life, shut up the heart from every influence but its own, remain unchanged through every change of various fortune, flinging its own shadow over all that is fair, its own bitterness into all that is sweet; but that grief is the silent and the secret—it goes abroad with a smooth brow and a smiling lip—it knows not the relief of tears, and words it disdains. None have fathomed its depths, for its existence is denied; pride is mingled with its