brings with it its own power of endurance. What a common expression it is to hear,—"Well, if I had known what I had to go through beforehand, I should never have believed it possible that I could have done it." But it is a dreadful thing to be left alone with your imagination, to have to fancy the worst, and yet not know what that worst may be; and this, in early youth, has a degree of acute anguish that after years cannot know. As we advance in life, we find all things here too utterly worthless to grieve over them as we once could grieve: we grow cold and careless; the dust, to which we are hastening, has entered into the heart.
But no girl of Ethel Churchill's age could hold this "inevitable creed." Hitherto she had thought but little—she had only felt. She loved Norbourne Courtenaye without a doubt, and without a fear. To her it seemed so natural to love him, that his affection appeared a thing of course, the inevitable consequence of her own. A sweet instinct soon told her that she was beloved, and
