Norah Peele was shocked to see the change which a few months had wrought in her once gay young companion. Could this be she who used to walk down the street with so jaunty a step, and so flaunting an air, with pink roses in her bonnet, and flounces on her wide-spreading dress? Could this pale drooping girl, with her thin fingers clenched together, and her pinched features rigid with unutterable woe, be the gay giddy creature who had laughed at care, and only lived for pleasure? Could this blind, sickly pauper, be the same as the milliner's lively young girl, whose ambition was to be thought a lady, to attract notice, and win admiration?
"Oh, Sophy! my poor Sophy!" exclaimed Norah, bursting into tears, as she ran up to her unhappy friend, and threw her arms around her.
Sophy Puller shed no tear, though her bosom heaved with sob-like gasps as she returned Norah's embrace. The poor girl could not speak for several moments, and then she faultered forth in a broken voice, "It is so kind—so like you, Norah, to come and see me here!" Then suddenly drawing herself back from Norah, with a passionate gesture of anguish, the unhappy Sophy exclaimed, "Oh, if you but knew my misery—the darkness here—everywhere—no hope! no hope!" She threw herself down on her bed, and covered her face with her hands.
Norah could not reply, she was weeping; but soft and low sounded the voice of Persis, repeating one verse from the Psalm, "Why art thou cast down, Oh, my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God!" *
* Psalm xlii. 11.
"Who is that speaking?" asked Sophy, hastily, but without withdrawing her hands.
"My friend, Miss Meade—I have spoken to you of her—she was my Sunday-class teacher," replied Norah.
"She need not come here, speaking of hope to me; I've none—never will have!" cried Sophy, speaking rapidly, and in a tone of despair. "I know all she can say—I was at school once—I was confirmed—I cared nothing for that at the time; but I remember well enough now what was said to me then; such thoughts come, I can't keep them out, to make me more wretched in the darkness!" Sophy started up again to her former position, and her dimmed eyes seemed staring wildly into vacancy as she went on, rather as if muttering to herself than as if addressing her companions. "I was told of two paths, one narrow, and leading to Heaven, the other broad, and leading to destruction; I took the broad, and now 'tis too late to return! I chose mirth and folly, I chose selfishness and sin, I turned my back upon all that I knew to be right, I led others astray, I forgot my God, and now there's but one text in all the Bible that I can recall to mind, and it haunts me night and day;" and in a tone that thrilled through the listeners, Sophy repeated the Saviour's most solemn question—"What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shall a man gave in exchange for his soul?" *
* Matt. xvi. 26.
Persis saw that the miserable Sophy was at that moment in too excited a state to receive religious instruction; the gentle, sympathising woman could only silently pray for wisdom to be given to herself, that she might direct the sufferer to the one Hope provided for sinners, and that grace might be given to Sophy, so that her bitter remorse might be changed into true repentance. Norah was the first to break silence; seating herself on the bed close to Sophy, and taking her hand tenderly between both of her own, she said, "Tell me, if it will not make you more sad, something of what has happened since you and I last saw each other on that night in September."