It was of these five years that Mrs. Treherne was thinking
now, and of others, perhaps, beyond them again, when she too
had been young, and beloved, and happy. There are some lives
which, in their even tenour of mild happiness, seem to glide
smoothly from one scattered sorrow to another, so that to the
very end some of the hopefulness and buoyancy of youth are
retained; but there are others in which are concentrated in
one brief space those keen joys and keener sorrows that no one
quite survives, which, in passing over us take from us our
strongest vitality, our young capacity for happiness and
suffering alike. Such a life had been Mrs. Treherne's. She had
been a woman of deep affections and passions, and they all lay
buried in those early years that had taken from her husband,
and children, and friend, and it was only a dim shadow of her
former self that moved, and spoke, and lived in these latter
days.
It was an old story with her now, however. She did not envy
these two happy people who were talking together in the next
room. It was of Madelon she was thinking most, thinking sadly
enough that in all these years she had not been able to win
the girl's heart.
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