Cashel Byron's Profession

Meanwhile, Lydia, on her return to the castle after a long drive

round the country, had attempted to overcome an attack of

restlessness by setting to work on the biography of her father. With

a view to preparing a chapter on his taste in literature she had

lately been examining his favorite books for marked passages. She

now resumed this search, not setting methodically to work, but

standing perched on the library ladder, taking down volume after

volume, and occasionally dipping into the contents for a few pages

or so. At this desultory work the time passed as imperceptibly as

the shadows lengthened. The last book she examined was a volume of

poems. There were no marks in it; but it opened at a page which had

evidently lain open often before. The first words Lydia saw were

these: "What would I give for a heart of flesh to warm me through Instead

of this heart of stone ice-cold whatever I do; Hard and cold and

small, of all hearts the worst of all."

Lydia hastily stepped down from the ladder, and recoiled until she

reached a chair, where she sat and read and reread these lines. The

failing light roused her to action. She replaced the book on the

shelf, and said, as she went to the writing-table, "If such a doubt

as that haunted my father it will haunt me, unless I settle what is

to be my heart's business now and forever. If it be possible for a

child of mine to escape this curse of autovivisection, it must

inherit its immunity from its father, and not from me--from the man

of emotion who never thinks, and not from the woman of

introspection, who cannot help thinking. Be it so."