CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE HAZELNUT HEDGE.
In a week Lady Catherine and her son arrived, but I had lost all desire to see them. Turner found no difficulty now in persuading me to keep in-doors. But George never sought me. I knew that Greenhurst rang with gaiety; that Estelle Canfield, with many other fair patricians, was filling its stately rooms with mirth and beauty, but I was forgotten. It seemed to me at times, that my heart would break. The roundness melted from my limbs; the bloom was slowly quenching itself on my cheeks; my orphanage had never been complete till then.
But Cora was left to me—the pet and darling of my life. I was still the same to her, and she was more gentle and more lovely than ever. To my surprise, the return of company to Greenhurst made little impression upon her. The girlish curiosity and excitement which had formerly annoyed me seemed extinguished in her nature. Indeed she became rather more sad than usual; and I often found her sitting alone, and so still, under the cypress tree, where her father had leaned on that funeral day.
It did not seem strange to me, this quiet sadness, thus harmonizing with the sorrow that dashed all joy from my own life. At another time I should have remarked it, but now it appeared natural as night tears do to the violet.
To Mr. Clarke I sometimes opened a leaf of my heart; but only to reveal the shadows that lay there, in abstract musings and mournful questions. At such times he soothed me with his sweet, Christian counsel, that left tears like dew upon every blossom of my nature. Thus I became day by day, more closely knitted to this good man and his child; and the girlish love that had been so strong merged itself into the still deeper affections of my opening womanhood. I loved them—how I loved them the reader will hereafter know!
One day, I was returning home about sunset, and alone. There was a footpath that shortened the distance across the meadows which lay between the village and Greenhurst, and I threaded it wearily, as one walks who has no object. The path led through the hazel thicket where my arm had been wounded. After clambering the wall I sat down among the bushes, weary, and so depressed that I longed to hide myself in their shelter even from the daylight.
I put back the lace that flowed from the short sleeves of my dress, and looked, through rushing tears, at the tiny white spot which the wound had left upon my arm. It was scarcely larger than a pearl, and to me infinitely more precious, for it came from him. It marked the reality of those love words that lay, even then, glowing in the bottom of my heart.
It was all over. He had gone his way in the world. I—yes, I must go mine; for to remain there in my dear old home with him so near, and yet so far away, was killing me.
I sobbed aloud; it was not often that weeping did me much good, but everything was so still—and I grew so miserably childish that the tears fell from my eyes like rain. A thrush lighted on a branch close by, and with his pretty head turned on one side, seemed regarding me with compassion. I thought of the lark’s nest, where, a child, I had slept so close to death, and wished, oh, how truly, that God had taken me then.
While I sat thus lost in sorrow, a gush of wind swept through the thicket, and I heard some one wading through the tall, red clover tops, shaking off their sweetness upon the air I breathed.