Page:Romance & Reality 3.pdf/120

118, forsooth!—it ought rather to ask forgiveness. She remembered how her childhood had grown up into youth, how happily!—recalled her first leaving home—then it was that she turned a new leaf in the book of life. She thought over her disappointment at first, her after brief enjoyment—her eyes opening at once to love and sorrow. How much had happened since then!—how much of mortification, how many vain hopes had flowered and then fallen! And yet her heart was still feverish with vague anticipation. With a sick, sad foreboding she thought of returning to England—to Edward Lorraine's country—but not with joy. Emily seemed to herself to have no longer spirits for hope. The quiet of the grave was scarcely too deep for her present mood. At this moment the stillness of the chapel itself was broken "by a confusion of tongues." First, a coarse and corporeal laugh—that which rises loud at a practical joke; a smaller, shrill, and undecided one—of the sort with which young ladies reply to a compliment equally above their merits and comprehension; also a foreign tongue, like "Iser, rolling rapidly;" and a drawling, yet dictatorial voice, loud above the rest, evidently patronising the prospect:—these