"In every heart a home, in every home a heaven."
In the warm-hearted cousin she remembered of old, one in whom she might repose trust and confidence, as in a brother, and in his beautiful and engaging wife the truth and sympathy of a sister.
Seated, therefore, upon the heathy common, there was more of pleasant dreaminess than of regretful sadness influencing her spirit, as her eyes wandered over the prospect spread before her with the attention of one, who would fain engrave each familiar feature on her memory, and bear away therein, a true and vivid picture of their beauties.
The pretty valley we have described lay immediately at her feet, with the woods beyond, amongst which proudly rose the mansion of Plas Glyn, of which her sister, by her marriage that morning with Sir Hugh Morgan, had become the youthful mistress; and a faint peculiar smile played on Mary's countenance as she sat there in her solitary freedom, and dwelt for a moment on this feature of the landscape.
But it had passed away, when her glance turned towards the spot where stood her own more modest, but still fairer home, Glan Pennant—then upwards, where the mountain ridges towering one above the other, were now eradiated by one of those sunsets of rare magnificence, which nature seemed to have called forth on this occasion, as a farewell token of affection to her meek and loving votary.
CHAPTER II.
Once, and once only, let me speak
Of all that I have felt for years;
You read it not upon my cheek,
You dreamed not of it in my tears.
L. E. L.