Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate,
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
LONGFELLOW.
In less than a fortnight from the period of this interview, Mary escorted by her brother-in-law, Mr. Gillespie, who had been in London on business, left England for Edinburgh.
This plan was much more accordant with her state of feeling at this period, than would have been that of accompanying her sister Agnes into Wales, as the latter was so affectionately anxious she should have done.
It would have been melancholy for her just then to have found her dear old home, Glan Pennant, in the hands of strangers, and there is something still more melancholy to the feelings in revisiting familiar scenes, associated as they may be in the mind with naught but happy careless memories, when over the spirit of our dream has passed like a blight some subduing change, such as was now overshadowing Mary's happiness.
"It wrings the heart to see each thing the same,
Tread over the same steps, and then to find
The difference in the heart. It is so sad,
So very lonely to be the sole one
In whom there is a sign of change."
Besides it was very long since she had seen her sister Alice, so tied to home by her many domestic cares and duties.
Agnes' life was one as yet all holiday enjoyment—her heart bounding with delight at the prospect of an establishment in her beautiful country home—in her own dear neighbourhood.
"There was no sorrow in her note"—and Mary perceived and rejoiced in the conviction that her younger sister's happiness needed no additional weight. Next to being happy herself, she desired most the power of bestowing happiness on others, and a real pleasure she knew would be her presence to that excellent elder sister. She would seek in some degree to aid and lighten her cares and avocations. It would have been better perhaps had she gone there, long ago. But could she bring her heart to accede to this assumption?