To her misfortune the occasion presented itself in connection with her strongest native affections, and under circumstances which led her to an irretrievable act.

Had she been brought up in a Roman Catholic country she would doubtless have thrown herself into a convent, finding her stern joy in the thought that no future wavering was possible.

Attempting to make a convent of her own mind, she soon knew too well that her efforts mocked her, that there was in her an instinct stronger than that of renunciation, and that she had condemned herself to a life of futile misery.
Her state of mind for the year following her father's death was morbid, little differing from madness; and she came at length to understand that.

When time had tempered her anguish, she saw with clear eyes that her acts had been guided by hallucination.

Never would sorrow for her parents cease to abide with her, but sorrow cannot be the sustenance of a life through those years when the mind is strongest and the sensations most vivid.