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                             IT MAY BE TRUE.


                                A NOVEL.


                             IN THREE VOLUMES.


                                    BY
                                MRS. WOOD.


                                 VOL. III.


                                  London:
                        T. CAUTLEY NEWBY, PUBLISHER,
                   30, WELBECK STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE,
                                   1865.

                  [THE RIGHT OF TRANSLATION IS RESERVED.]




                             IT MAY BE TRUE.




CHAPTER I.

IS THERE A FATE IN IT?

  "The grief of slighted love, suppress'd,
  Scarce dull'd her eye, scarce heav'd her breast;
  Or if a tear, she strove to check,
  A truant tear stole down her neck,
  It seem'd a drop that, from his bill,
  The linnet casts, beside a rill,
  Flirting his sweet and tiny shower
  Upon a milk-white April flower:--
  Or if a sigh, breathed soft and low,
  Escaped her fragrant lips; e'en so
  The zephyr will, in heat of day,
  Between two rose leaves fan its way."

                                    COLMAN.


Amy had been some three weeks at home, and as yet there had been no
improvement in Mrs. Neville's health to justify her daughter's return to
Brampton. There was the same lassitude, the same weariness. She would
lie on the sofa day after day, with no bodily ailment save that of
weakness, and an utter inability to get better, and apparently with no
wish to do so. She never complained, but was ever grateful and content.
It was as if life were waning away imperceptibly, and her spirits, which
had always bravely struggled through all her trials and sorrows, had at
last sunk never to rise again.

Amy seldom left her, but generally sat by her side, on a low footstool,
reading or working. Sometimes Mrs. Neville would lay her hand gently on
the fair masses of hair, and Amy, whose heart was very sorrowful, would
hold her head lower still so that her tears might fall unseen.

There was something peculiarly tender and very pitying in the way the
hand was placed on her head; at least Amy thought so, and strove more
than ever to be cheerful, lest her mother, who lay so silently watching
her, should guess at the secret grief in her heart which she was
striving so hard, and she trusted successfully, to overcome; while, as
yet, no word of it had passed between them. If Mrs. Neville thought her
daughter's spirits less joyous, or her manner more quiet, while her eyes
no longer flashed with their old bright expression, but at times drooped
sadly under their long lashes, she said nothing; and Amy, while obliged
sometimes to talk of her life at Brampton, never mentioned Charles's
name; yet in the solitude of her own room she sometimes thought of him,
and how as she had sat at one of the cross-stations, on her road from
Standale, awaiting the arrival of the train that was to take her on to
Ashleigh, she had seen Charles amongst the crowd hurrying into the one
bound for Brampton; while she, soon afterwards, was speeding along over
a part of the very way he had so recently travelled. Both had been
waiting some twenty minutes at the same station, and yet neither had
been near enough to speak, but had been as effectually separated as
though miles had divided them, instead of so many yards. Strange
fatality! which might have altered the future lives of both.

Yes, he had gone to Brampton the very morning she had left it: one half
hour later on her part, and they would have met. She was glad she had
not missed the train, and that they had not met. Glad that she was
absent from the park, and not obliged to see him day after day, or hear
the children talk, as they sometimes did, of their uncle.

Julia often wrote to Amy all the chit-chat of the park. How Charles
Linchmore had returned, and was often at Frances' side; and how the
latter's airs had become more intolerable in consequence. How Anne
snubbed Mr. Hall as much as ever; but was, in Julia's opinion, more
pleased with him, and more contented to put up with his grave reproofs
than she used to be; and how Julia thought it would be a match in the
end, and wondered what kind of a clergyman's wife she would make. And
lastly, that Mr. Vavasour had left the park.

Anne also wrote, but only once, and her letter was short; yet Amy read
it over and over again, until she knew the last few lines by heart, and
wondered what they meant; or whether they were hastily written, and had
no point or hidden meaning, but were simply penned and then forgotten,
as many things often were, that were said by Anne Bennet, in her quick
impulsiveness. "Come back, Miss Neville," she wrote, "we all want you
sadly. As for Charles, he is not himself, and will be lost!"

These were the words that troubled Amy, were ever at her heart all day,
and chased away sleep from her pillow, until her tired overwrought brain
relieved itself in silent, secret tears--tears far more painful than
passionate sobs. Those are at the surface, and soon over, they cure
grief by their very bitterness, and by the self-abandonment of the
sufferer; the others lie deeper and break the heart.

These words of Anne's, whether incautiously written or not, determined
Amy on not returning to Brampton, until Charles Linchmore's leave had
expired; and that, she knew, must be in another week or so. If Miss
Bennet meant he was fast losing his heart to Frances, and that Amy must
go back to wean him away, how little she knew of the pride of her
woman's nature. What! seek, or throw herself in the way of a man's love?
Scarcely wooed, be won? Amy shrank at the very idea. No, if her love was
worth having it was worth winning; and that,--not with the sternness of
man's nature, not by the force of his strong will, not by exciting her
jealousy with another, but by gentleness and kindness; and then her
heart reverted to Robert Vavasour, and she wished she could love him,
for had he not ever been kind to her? and gentle, very, even when she
had pained him most.

He had been very kind to her, there was no doubt about that, not only to
her, but for her sake to those most dear to her. At one time came some
beautiful hot-house grapes, at another some delicate game. Little Sarah
called them the gifts of the "good unknown."

The rail was open all the way to quiet Ashleigh now, and although the
place did not boast of a railway van or even porter, still the station
master always found some