Have all my young and happy days been but a dream, from which I wake
at last? Is not this dreadful certainty still as a hideous dream to
me?"

She had another cause of bitter grief. She loved the young and
noble-minded Lord Russell, the Earl of Bedford's eldest son; and she
had heard him vow affection and faithfulness to her. She now perceived
at once the reasons why the Earl of Bedford had objected to their
marriage: she almost wondered within herself that the Lord Russel
should have chosen her; and though she loved him more for avowing his
attachment, though her heart pleaded warmly for him, she determined to
renounce his plighted love. "It must be done," she said, "and better
now;--delay will but bring weakness. _Now_ I can write--I feel that I
have strength." And the Lady Anne wrote, and folded with a trembling
hand the letter which should give up her life's happiness; and fearing
her resolution might not hold, she despatched it by a messenger, as
the Lord Russel was then in the neighbourhood; and returned mournfully
to her own chamber. She opened an old volume which lay upon her
toilette--a volume to which she turned in time of trouble, to seek
that peace which the world cannot give.

Lady Ellinor soon aroused her by the tidings that a messenger had
arrived with a letter from her father, and she descended in search
of him.

"Oh, why is this? why am I here?" exclaimed the Lady Anne, as
trembling and almost sinking to the ground--her face alternately pale
and covered with crimson blushes, she found herself alone with the
Lord Russell. "You have received my letter, might not this trial have
been spared? my cup was already sufficiently bitter--but I had drunk