It was the same countenance which he had formerly known in all the bloom of early beauty; but though the beauty remained, the bloom was fled for ever.

Not the agitation of exercise--not that which arose from the pain and confusion of this unexpected interview, had called to poor Clara's cheek even the momentary semblance of colour.
Her complexion was marble-white, like that of the finest piece of statuary.
"Is it possible ?" said Tyrrel; "can grief have made such ravages ?" "Grief," replied Clara, "is the sickness of the mind, and its sister is the sickness of the body--they are twin-sisters, Tyrrel, and are seldom long separate.

Sometimes the body's disease comes first, and dims our eyes and palsies our hands, before the fire of our mind and of our intellect is quenched.

But mark me--soon after comes her cruel sister with her urn, and sprinkles cold dew on our hopes and on our loves, our memory, our recollections, and our feelings, and shows us that they cannot survive the decay of our bodily powers." "Alas!" said Tyrrel, "is it come to this ?" "To this," she replied, speaking from the rapid and irregular train of her own ideas, rather than comprehending the purport of his sorrowful exclamation,--"to this it must ever come, while immortal souls are wedded to the perishable substance of which our bodies are composed.
There is another state, Tyrrel, in which it will be otherwise--God grant our time of enjoying it were come!" She fell into a melancholy pause, which Tyrrel was afraid to disturb.
The quickness with which she spoke, marked but too plainly the irregular succession of thought, and he was obliged to restrain the agony of his own feelings, rendered more acute by a thousand painful recollections, lest, by giving way to his expressions of grief, he should throw her into a still more disturbed state of mind.
"I did not think," she proceeded, "that after so horrible a separation, and so many years, I could have met you thus calmly and reasonably.

But although what we were formerly to each other can never be forgotten, it is now all over, and we are only friends--Is it not so ?" Tyrrel was unable to reply.
"But I must not remain here," she said, "till the evening grows darker on me .-- We shall meet again, Tyrrel--meet as friends--nothing more--You will come up to Shaws-Castle and see me ?--no need of secrecy now--my poor father is in his grave, and his prejudices sleep with him--my brother John is kind, though he is stern and severe sometimes--Indeed, Tyrrel, I believe he loves me, though he has taught me to tremble at his frown when I am in spirits, and talk too much--But he loves me, at least I think so, for I am sure I love him; and I try to go down amongst them yonder, and to endure their folly, and, all things considered, I do carry on the farce of life wonderfully well--We are but actors, you know, and the world but a stage." "And ours has been a sad and tragic scene," said Tyrrel, in the bitterness of his heart, unable any longer to refrain from speech.
"It has indeed--but, Tyrrel, when was it otherwise with engagements formed in youth and in folly?
You and I would, you know, become men and women, while we were yet scarcely more than children--We have run, while yet in our nonage, through the passions and adventures of youth, and therefore we are now old before our day, and the winter of our life has come on ere its summer was well begun .-- O Tyrrel! often and often have I thought of this!--Thought of it often?
Alas, when will the time come that I shall be able to think of any thing else!" The poor young woman sobbed bitterly, and her tears began to flow with a freedom which they had not probably enjoyed for a length of time.