Miss Belinda was somewhat taken aback at the proposal of Mr. Sylvester to receive Paula into his own house. She had not anticipated any such result to her efforts; the utmost she had expected was a couple of years or so of instruction in some state Academy. Nor did she know whether she was altogether pleased at the turn affairs were taking. From all she had heard, her niece Ona was, to say the least, a frivolous woman, and Paula had a mind too noble to be subjected to the deteriorating influence of a shallow and puerile companionship. Then the child had great beauty; Mr. Sylvester who ought to be a judge in such matters had declared it so, and what might not the adulation of the thoughtless and the envy of the jealous, do towards belittling a nature as yet uncontaminated.
“We ought to think twice,” she said to Miss Abby with some bitterness, who on the contrary never having thought once was full of the most childish hopes concerning a result which she considered with a certain secret complacency she would not have acknowledged for the world, had been very much furthered by her own wise recommendations to Mr. Sylvester in the beginning of his visit. Yet notwithstanding her doubts Miss Belinda allowed such preparations to be made as she considered necessary, and even lent her hand which was deft enough in its way, to the task of enlarging the child’s small wardrobe. As for Paula, the thought of visiting the great city with the dear friend whose image had stood in her mind from early childhood as the impersonation of all that was noble, generous and protecting, was more than joyful; it was an inspiration. Not that she did not cling to the affectionate if somewhat quaint couple who had befriended her childhood and sacrificed their comfort to her culture and happiness. But the chord that lies deeper than gratitude had been struck, and fond as were her memories of the dear old home, the charm of that deep “My child,” with its hint of fatherly affection, was more than her heart could stand; and no spot, no not the realms of fairy-land itself, looked so attractive to her fancy as that far fireside in an unknown home where she might sit with cousin Ona and alternately with her exert her wit to beguile the smile to his melancholy lips.
When therefore upon the stated day, Mr. Sylvester made his second appearance at the little cottage in Grotewell, it was to find Paula radiant, Miss Abby tearfully exultant and Miss Belinda—O anomaly of human nature—silent and severe. Attributing this however to her very natural regret at parting with Paula, he entered into all the arrangements for their departure on the following morning without a suspicion of the real state of her mind, nor was he undeceived until the day was nearly over and they sat down to have a few minutes of social conversation before the early tea.
They had been speaking on some local topic involving a question of right and wrong, and Mr. Sylvester’s ears were yet thrilling to the deep ringing tones with which Paula uttered the words, “I do not see how any man can hesitate an instant when the voice of his conscience says no. I should think the very sunlight would daunt him at the first step of his foot across the forbidden line,” when Miss Belinda suddenly spoke up and sending Paula out of the room on some trivial pretext, addressed Mr. Sylvester without reserve.
“I have something to say to you, sir, before you take from my home the child of my care and affection.”
Could he have guessed what that something was that he should turn with such a flush of sudden anxiety to meet her determined gaze.
“The rules of our life here have been simple,” continued she in a tone of voice which those who knew her well recognized as belonging to her uncompromising moods. “To do our duty, love God and serve our neighbor. Paula has been brought up to reverence those rules in simplicity and honor; what will your gay city life with its hollow devices for pleasure and its loose hold on the firm principles of life, do for this innocent soul, Mr. Sylvester?”
“The city,” he said firmly but with a troubled undertone in his voice that was not unnoted by the watchful woman, “is a vast caldron of mingled good and evil. She will hear of more wrong doing, and be within the reach of more self-denying virtue, than if she had remained in this village alone with the nature that she so much loves. The tree of knowledge bears two kinds of fruit, Miss Belinda; would you therefore hinder the child from approaching its branches?”
“No, sir; I am not so weak as to keep a child in swaddling-clothes after the period of infancy is past, neither am I so reckless as to set her adrift on an unknown sea without a pilot to guide her. Your wife—” she paused and fixed an intent look upon the flames leaping before her. “Ona is my niece,” she resumed in a lower tone of voice, “and I feel entitled to speak with freedom concerning her. Is she such a guide as I would choose for a young girl just entering a new sphere in life? From all I have heard, I should judge she was somewhat over-devoted to this world and its fashions.”
Mr. Sylvester flushed painfully, but seeing that any softening of the truth would be wholly ineffectual with this woman, replied in a candid tone, “Ona is the same now as she was in the days of her girlhood. If she loves the world too well she is not without her excuse; from her birth it has strewn nothing but roses in her path.”