The things we do!

Many a good woman's life is no more cheerful; a
spring of beauty, a little warmth and sunshine of love, a bitter
disappointment, followed by pangs and frantic tears, then a long
monotonous story of submission. "Not here, my daughter, is to be your
happiness," says the priest; "whom Heaven loves it afflicts." And he
points out to her the agonies of suffering saints of her sex; assures her
of their present beatitudes and glories; exhorts her to bear her pains
with a faith like theirs; and is empowered to promise her a like reward.
The other matron is not less alone. Her husband and son are dead, without
a tear for either,--to weep was not in Lady Kew's nature. Her grandson,
whom she had loved perhaps more than any human being, is rebellious and
estranged from her; her children, separated from her, save one whose
sickness and bodily infirmity the mother resents as disgraces to herself.
Her darling schemes fail somehow. She moves from town to town, and ball
to ball, and hall to castle, for ever uneasy and always alone.


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