which was about to be waged in her heart.... Will she come forth from that war victorious, although wounded and heart-broken? or conquered and fallen? Will her one mainstay—her firm conviction in the truth and the divine authority of her religion—carry her triumphantly through it? or will she sink under the enemy's sharp blows from want of that child-like love and confidence in the goodness of God which would have blunted their edge? Ah, who can tell? It is a fearful test to be called upon to dash away the cup which human happiness is "uplifting, pressing, and to lips like" hers! Let us, then, follow her into her room and watch the warfare's course.
She fastened the door, threw aside her cloak, and tearing off her pearl necklace—a gift of Mr. Earnscliffe's—as if its clasp round her neck were choking her, she walked up and down the room with rapid steps, and her hands nervously pressed together. At last she exclaimed—
"Great God! it is as if Thou didst sport with the heart of Thy creature! It would seem as if it were to crush that heart with tenfold force that Thou didst lead me through a youth of deep yearning after some object worthy of devoting myself to unreservedly, until I met one who filled the void; and then after opening up to me a vista of happiness and of a blessed work to be accomplished—that of healing his wounded spirit and leading it to the knowledge of truth which it has so long sought for in vain—Thou callest upon me to give him up, and not only that, but at the same time, with my own hand, to inflict on him a blow which will cast him back into darkness and despair! Is this love or justice?"
She stopped short in her quick walk, and stood before the window gazing out on the now quiet, deserted avenue, and then she raised her eyes slowly to the blue starry sky above, as if, indeed, she would cry with Promethus—
"O majesty of earth, my solemn mother!
............ Earth and Ether,
Ye I invoke to know the wrongs I suffer."
With a groan she turned away, threw herself upon a chair, and covered up her face with her hands; but after a few minutes she took them down, and said slowly—
"But let me try to think calmly.... Perhaps I have been too hasty in at once supposing that I must give him up. Marriage, except among Catholics, is not a sacrament: it is merely a civil contract made by law, and 'what the law can make it can break' is an old-established maxim, therefore Edwin is evidently free." She paused; but again she resumed her soliloquy. "Yet the Church, I know, does not recognise the law of divorce even among those who are not her children; but if that decree be against reason, justice, and charity, am I bound to submit to it? It could not be a good deed to drive him to despair, and that, too, without being able to give him any sufficiently sound reason—at least, any which would appear so to him—for my conduct. He would think that my love for him was not strong enough to make me give up—as he would call it—a mere prejudice of my education. It would only make him hate, and keep him away from, religious truth. No, I cannot do this. There is no really good reason why I may not be your wife, my beloved, and that I will be! So now it is decided, I will marry him; and having begun the night in true heroine style, with a wild rhapsody, I had better finish it like a rational person and go to bed. But how I wish that he had never been married, or that she" (Flora gave her no name) "were dead!"
She stood up, took off her ball dress, put on her dressing-gown, and began to take down her hair.
Has the battle, then, been fought and lost? Is Flora about to fall from light to darkness? Will she be false to her own principle? Will she cast herself into the chaos of uncertainty and shifting opinion from which she would have drawn her lover? Does she forget, when she says that her refusal to marry him would keep him away from religious truth, that if she does marry him, she places a stronger barrier than ever between him and it? Yet stay, the battle is not quite over; even if the enemy has gained possession of the colours for the moment, they may be regained by the poor combatant.
Flora had just finished unweaving the thick plaits of her hair, when she impetuously dashed it back from off her face, exclaiming, as she resumed her pacing up and down the room—