The Amethyst Box

by Anna Katharine Green

"I have dared to hope so, despite the little opportunity she has given me to express my feelings. She has always held me back, and that very decidedly, or my devotion would have been apparent to everybody."

"Oh, Dorothy!"

Regret, sorrow, infinite tenderness, all were audible in that cry. Indeed, it seemed as if for the moment her thoughts were more taken up with her cousin's unhappiness than with her own.

"How I must have made her suffer! I have been a curse to those who loved me. But I am humbled now, and very rightly."

I began to experience a certain awe of this great nature. There was grandeur even in her contrition and, as I took in the expression of her colorless features, sweet with almost an unearthly sweetness in spite of the anguish consuming her, I suddenly realized what Sinclair's love for her must be. I also as suddenly realized the depth and extent of his suffering. To call such a woman his, to lead her almost to the foot of the altar and then to see her turn aside and leave him! Surely his lot was an intolerable one, and, though the interference I had unconsciously made in his wishes had been involuntary, I felt like cursing myself for not having been more open in my attentions to the girl I really loved.

Gilbertine seemed to divine my thoughts, for, pausing at the door she had unconsciously approached, she stood with the knob in her hand, and, with averted brow, remarked gravely:

"I am going out of your life. Before I do so, however, I should like to say a few words in palliation of my conduct. I have never known a mother. I early fell under my aunt's charge, who, detesting children, sent me away to school, where I was well enough treated, but never loved. I was a plain child and felt my plainness. This gave an awkwardness to my actions, and as my aunt had caused it to be distinctly understood that her sole intention in sending me to the Academy was to have me educated for a teacher, my position awakened little interest, and few hearts, if any, warmed toward me. Meanwhile my breast was filled with but one thought, one absorbing wish. I longed to love passionately and be passionately loved in return. Had I found a mate—but I never did. I was not destined for any such happiness.

"Years passed. I was a woman, but neither my happiness nor my self-confidence had kept pace with my growth. Girls who once passed me with a bare nod now stopped to stare, sometimes to whisper comments behind my back. I did not understand this change, and withdrew more and more into myself and the fairy-land made for me by books. Romance was my life, and I had fallen into the dangerous habit of brooding over the pleasures and excitements which would have been mine had I been born beautiful and wealthy, when my aunt suddenly visited the school, saw me and at once took me away and placed me in the most fashionable school in New York City. From there I was launched, without any word of motherly counsel, into the gay society you know so well. Almost with my coming-out I found the world at my feet and, though my aunt showed me no love, she evinced a certain pride in my success and cast about to procure for me a great match. Mr. Sinclair was the victim. He visited me, took me to theaters and eventually proposed. My aunt was in ecstasies. I, who felt helpless before her will, was glad that the husband she had chosen for me was, at least, a gentleman, and, to all appearances, respectable in his living and nice in his tastes. But he was not the man I had dwelt on in my dreams, and while I accepted him—(it was not possible to do anything else, with my aunt controlling every action, if not every thought)—I cared so little for Mr. Sinclair himself that I forgot to ask if his many attentions were the result of any real feeling on his part or only such as he considered due to the woman he expected to make his wife. You see what girls are. How I despise myself now for this miserable frivolity!

"All this time I knew that I was not my aunt's only niece; that Dorothy Camerden, of whom I knew little but her name, was as closely related to her as I was. For, true to her heartless code, my aunt had placed us in separate schools and we had never met. When she found that I was to leave her and that soon there would be nobody to see that her dresses were bought with discretion, and her person attended to with something like care, she sent for Dorothy. I shall never forget my first impression of her. I had been told that I need not expect much in the way of beauty and style, but from my first glimpse of her dear face, I saw that my soul's friend had come and that, marriage or no marriage, I need never be solitary again.

"I do not think I made as favorable an impression on my cousin as she did on me. Dorothy was new to elaborate dressing and to all the follies of fashionable life, and her look had more of awe than expectation in it. But I gave her a hearty kiss and in a week she was as brilliantly equipped as myself.