The long pressure of the grave-sods could not crush out the impression of that love, stronger than death, deeper than the grave.
Had the time arrived when I might claim the manuscript, left as a hallowed legacy to the orphan, who had no other inheritance?
Had I awakened to the knowledge of woman's destiny to love and suffer?
Dare I ask myself this question?
Through the morning twilight of my heart, was not a star trembling, whose silver rays would never be quenched, save in the nightshades of death?
Was it not time to listen to the warning voice, whose accents, echoing from the tomb, must have the power and grandeur of prophecy?
Yes! I would ask Mrs.Linwood for my mother's history, as soon as we returned to Grandison Place; and if I found the shadow of disgrace rested on the memory of her I so loved and worshipped, I would fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, to avoid that searching eye, which, next to the glance of Omnipotence, I would shun in guilt and shame.
"They say!" Who are _they_?
who are the cowled monks, the hooded friars who glide with shrouded faces in the procession of life, muttering in an unknown tongue words of mysterious import?
Who are _they_?
the midnight assassins of reputation, who lurk in the by-lanes of society, with dagger tongues sharpened by invention and envenomed by malice, to draw the blood of innocence, and, hyena-like, banquet on the dead?
Who are _they_?
They are a multitude no man can number, black-stoled familiars of the inquisition of slander, searching for victims in every city, town, and village, wherever the heart of humanity throbs, or the ashes of mortality find rest.
Oh, coward, coward world--skulkers! Give me the bold brigand, who thunders along the highways with flashing weapon that cuts the sunbeams as well as the shades.

Give me the pirate, who _unfurls_ the black flag, emblem of his terrible trade, and _shows_ the plank which your doomed feet must tread; but save me from the _they-sayers_ of society, whose knives are hidden in a velvet sheath, whose bridge of death, is woven of flowers; and who spread, with invisible poison, even the spotless whiteness of the winding-sheet..