CHAPTER XXI.
LADY MARCHMONT'S JOURNAL.
We might have been!—these are but common words,
And yet they make the sum of life's bewailing;
They are the echo of those finer chords,
Whose music life deplores when unavailing,—
We might have been!
Alas! how different from what we are,
Had we but known the bitter path before us!
But feelings, hopes, and fancies, left afar,
What in the wide, bleak world can e'er restore us?—
We might have been!
It is now a fortnight since I have seen him! How often have I wished that he had been of our party here; and yet but for this absence, I should never have had his letters; I should never have known him as I now do. What a world of thought and of feeling have
