when you refer to them, that repel me. It is so unlike you!"
"So like me, Carry! My character is velvet or fur—stroke it in one direction, and you enhance whatever of beauty or gloss it possesses; reverse the motion, and you encounter rough prickles, and in certain states of the atmosphere, more electricity than is agreeable or safe. I am not changed. The hand of affection is gliding over me now; you may do what you will with me."
"But you are happier than you used to be?"
"I am—happier in you! Do you recollect the stormy November evening when you 'took me in?' Cold, and wet, and shivering as was the body, the heart stood more in need of comfort; and you warmed it—taught me that woman is woman still—brow-beaten, insulted, crushed! The poor, soiled flowerets of love will smile, despite of all—in the face of him, or her whose pitying hand lifts them up. Carry! you do not know what depends upon your fidelity! Have you not read in that most wondrous of books, how the evil spirit returned to the house, which, in his absence, was swept and garnished, and that the latter end of that man was worse than the first?"
"Ida! my own friend! how can you hint such frightful things? I do love you—very dearly? You cannot doubt me."
"Not now. But will the time never come, when other claims will dispossess me of my place? Do not despise me, darling! Do not impute to me the meanness of being envious of your happiness. I rejoice with, and am proud for you—proud of your choice. He is all that a man should be—let me say it—I have never told you so before;—but is it true love expels friendship? You will be as dear to me married as single; why should your affection decrease?"
"It will not!" Could it be the modest Carry who spoke? "Judge for yourself. Arthur and I have loved from childhood. He spoke to me of his hopes two years ago, but father exacted from us a promise that no love but that of brother and sister should be named between us until my school-days were at an end. Yet I knew that I was not a sister to him; and, to me, he was more than the world besides:—and with this sweet consciousness singing its song of hope and blessedness within my heart, I found room for you; and lover and friend were each the dearer for the other's company. You will understand this some day, dear Ida. You are made to be loved—you cannot exist without it, and you will achieve your destiny."
"That love is to be my redemption, Carry. In the upper region of the air there is eternal calm and sunshine, while the clouds brood and crash below. Such calm and light shall my love win for me. I have dwelt for years in the black, noisome vapors—I am rising now! Is it not Jean Paul who says—'Love may slumber in a young maiden's heart, but he always dreams!' I have had dreams—day visions, more transporting than any the night bestows. I have dreamed that my wayward will bent, in glad humility, to a stronger and wiser mind;—that my eye fell beneath the fondness of one that quailed at nothing; that I leaned my tired head upon a bosom, whose every throb was to me an earnest of his abiding truth; and drank in the music of a voice, whose sweetest accent was the low whisper that called me 'his own!' These are not chance vagaries; they have been the food of my heart for long and dreary months; angel-voices about my pillow—my companions in the still twilight hour—summoned by pleasure or pain, to sympathise and console. Then my breast is a temple, consecrated to an ideal, but none the less fervent in the devotion offered therein; the hoarded riches of a lifetime are heaped upon his shrine. I have imagined him high in the world's opinion; doing his part nobly in the strife of life;—and I, unawed by the laurel-crown—unheeding it—say, 'Love me—only love me!' I love to fancy, and feel him present, and sing to him the strains which gush from my soul at his coming. This is one."
She left Carry's side. A lightly-played prelude floated through the darkening room, then a recitative, of which the words and music seemed alike born out of the impulse of the hour:
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