As if possessed by a spirit whose influence over her she could not control, she caught up the unread sheet and threw it into the fire.

As the flames seized upon and consumed it, she drew a long breath and murmured, "So perish the memory of our acquaintance!" Almost a dead letter of suffering had been those two years.

There are no events to record, and but little progress to state.

Yes, there had been a dead level of suffering--a palsied condition of heart and mind; a period of almost sluggish endurance, in which pride and an indomitable will gave strength to bear.
Mr.Delancy and his daughter were sitting, as we have seen, on that sweet June day, in silent abstraction of thought, when the serving-man, who had been to the village, stepped into the portico and handed Irene a letter.

The sight of it caused her heart to leap and the blood to crimson suddenly her face.