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It is a fearful responsibility, the exercise of influence: let our own conduct bring its own consequences—we may well meet the worst; not so when we have led another to pursue any given line of action: if they suffer, how tenfold is that suffering visited on ourselves! For Flora life could offer nothing but the black veil of the Benedictine convent. There are no associations so precious as those of our earlier years. It is upon them that the heart turns back amid after-cares and sorrows:—the nursery, the old garden, the green field, remain the latest things that memory cherishes. They keep alive something of their own freshness and purity; and the affections belonging to those uncalculating hours have a faith and warmth unknown to after-life. To this ordinary but most sweet love Flora had added the ideal and the picturesque—and love, to reach its highest order, must be worked up by the imagination. She saw in her brother the chieftain of their line—the last descendant of Ivor. He was the support of the cause whose loyalty to its ill-fated adherents was as religion—their lofty enthusiasm was as much in common as their daily habits; they looked back and they looked forward together. When the last Vich Ian Vohr had perished on the scaffold, there remained for his lonely and devoted sister but the convent—a brief resting-place before the grave.
L. E. L.

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