The Cornhill Magazine Author:George Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XXXVIII. Concerning Sissy. Percival had announced the fact of the Lisles' presence in Bellevue Street to Sissy, in a carefully careless sente... more »nce. Sissy read it, and shivered sadly. Then she answered in a peculiarly bright and cheerful letter. " I'm not fit for him," she thought, as she wrote it. " I don't understand him, and I'm always afraid. Even when he loved me best, I felt as if he loved some ilreaui girl, and took me for her in his dream, and would be angry with me when he woke. Miss Lisle would not be afraid. It is the least I can do for Percival, not to stand in the way of his happiness -- the least I can do -- and oh, how much the hardest! " So she gave Thorne to understand that she was getting on remarkably well. It was not altogether false. She had fallen from a dizzy height, but she had found something of rest and security in the valley below. And as prisoners, cut off from all the larger interests of their lives, pet the plants and creatures which chance to lighten their captivity, so did Sissy begin to take pleasure in little gaieties, for which she had not cared in old days. She could sleep now at night without apprehension, and she woke refreshed. There was a great blank in her existence, where the thunderbolt fell, but the cloud, which hung so blackly overhead, was gone. The lonely life was sad, but it held nothing quite so dreadful as the fear that a day might come when Percival and his wife would know that they stood on different levels, that she could not see with his eyes, nor understand his thoughts, when he would look at her with sorrowful patience, and she would die slowly of his terrible kindness. The lonely life was sad, but, after all, Sissy Langton would not be twenty-one till April. Percival read her letter, and asked Godfrey ...« less