Transcriber's Note: There were a number of printer's errorswithin the text which have not been altered.
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?
Amy had been some three weeks at home, and as yet there had been noimprovement in Mrs. Neville's health to justify her daughter's return toBrampton. There was the same lassitude, the same weariness. She wouldlie on the sofa day after day, with no bodily ailment save that of[1]weakness, and an utter inability to get better, and apparently with nowish to do so. She never complained, but was ever grateful and content.It was as if life were waning away imperceptibly, and her spirits, whichhad always bravely struggled through all her trials and sorrows, had atlast 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 onthe fair masses of hair, and Amy, whose heart was very sorrowful, wouldhold her head lower still so that her tears might fall unseen.
There was something peculiarly tender and very pitying in the way thehand was placed on her head; at least Amy thought so, and strove morethan ever to be cheerful, lest her mother, who lay so silently watchingher, should guess at the secret grief in her heart which she wasstriving so hard, and she trusted successfully, to overcome; while, asyet, no word of it had passed between[2]them. If Mrs. Neville thought herdaughter's spirits less joyous, or her manner more quiet, while her eyesno longer flashed with their old bright expression, but at times droopedsadly under their long lashes, she said nothing; and Amy, while obligedsometimes to talk of her life at Brampton, never mentioned Charles'sname; 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 fromStandale, awaiting the arrival of the train that was to take her on toAshleigh, she had seen Charles amongst the crowd hurrying into the onebound for Brampton; while she, soon afterwards, was speeding along overa part of the very way he had so recently travelled. B