Miss Belinda sitting before her bedroom fire on a certain windy night in January, presented a picture of the most profound thought. A year had elapsed since, with heavy heart and moistened eye, she had bidden good-bye to the child of her care, and beheld her drift away with her new friend into a strange and untried life. And now a letter had come from that friend, in which with the truest appreciation for the feelings of herself and sister, he requested their final permission to adopt Paula as his own child and the future occupant of his house and heart.
Yes, after a year of increased comfort, Mrs. Sylvester, who would never have consented to receive as her own any child demanding care or attention, had decided it was quite a different matter to give place and position to a lovely girl already grown, whose beauty was sufficiently pronounced to do credit to the family while at the same time it was of a character to heighten by contrast her own very manifest attractions. So the letter, destined to create such a disturbance in the stern and powerful mind of Miss Belinda, had been written and dispatched.
And indeed it was matter for the gravest reflection. To accede to this important request was to yield up all control over the dear young girl whose affection had constituted the brightness of this somewhat disappointed life, while to refuse an offer made with such evident love and anxiety, was to bring a pang of regret to a heart she hesitated to wound. The question of advantage which might have swayed others in their decision, did not in the least affect Miss Belinda. Now that Paula had seen the world and gained an insight into certain studies beyond the reach of her own attainments, any wishes in which she might have indulged on that score were satisfied, and mere wealth with its concomitant of luxuriant living, she regarded with distrust, and rather in the light of a stumbling-block to the great and grand end of all existence.
Suddenly with that energy which characterized all her movements, she rose from her seat, and first casting a look of somewhat cautious inquiry at the recumbent figure of her sister, asleep in the heavy old fashioned bed that occupied one corner of the room, she proceeded to a bureau drawer and took out a small box which she unlocked on the table. It was full of letters; those same honest epistles, which, as empowered by Mr. Sylvester, she had requested Paula to send her from week to week. Some of them were a year old, but she read them all carefully through, while the clock ticked on the shelf and the wind soughed in the chimney. Certain passages she marked, and when she had finished the pile, she took up the letters again and re-read those passages. They were necessarily desultory in their character, but they all had, in her mind at least, a bearing upon the question on hand, and as such, I give them to my readers.
“O aunty, I have made a friend, a sweet girl friend who I have reason to hope will henceforth be to me as my other eye and hand. Her name is Stuyvesant—a name by the way that always calls up a certain complacent smile on Cousin Ona’s countenance—and she is the daughter of one of the directors of Mr. Sylvester’s bank. I met her in a rather curious way. For some reason Ona had expressed a wish for me to ride horseback. She is rather too large for the exercise herself, but thought it looked well, she said, to see a lady and groom ride from the front of the house; moreover it would keep me in color by establishing my health. So Mr. Sylvester who denies her nothing, promised us horses and the groom, and as a preparation for acquitting myself with credit, has sent me to one of the finest riding academies in the city. It was here I met Miss Stuyvesant. She is a small interesting-looking girl whose chief beauty lies in her expression which is certainly very charming. I was conscious of a calm and satisfied feeling the moment I saw her. Her eyes which are raised with a certain appeal to your face, are blue, while her lips that break into smiles only at rare moments, are rosy and delicately curved. In her riding-habit she looks like a child, but when dressed for the street she surprises you with the reserved and womanly air with which she carries her proud head. Altogether she is a sweet study to me, alluring me with her glance yet awing me by her dainty ladyhood, a ladyhood too unconscious to be affected and yet so completely a part of her whole delicate being, that you could as soon dissociate the bloom from the rose, as the air of highborn reserve, from this sweet scion of one of New York’s oldest families.
“I was mounting my horse when our eyes first met, and I never shall forget her look of delighted surprise. Did she recognize in me the friend I now hope to become? Later we were introduced by Mr. Sylvester who had been so kind as to accompany me that day. The way in which he said to her, ‘This is Paula,’ proved that I was no new topic of conversation between them, and indeed she afterwards explained to me that she had been forewarned of my arrival during an afternoon call at his house. There was in this first interview none of the unnecessary gush which you have so often reprobated as childish; indeed Miss Stuyvesant is not a person with whom one would presume to be familiar, nor was it till we had met several times that any acknowledgement was made of the mutual interest with which we found ourselves inspired. Cousin Ona to whom I had naturally spoken of the little lady, wished me to cultivate her acquaintance more assiduously, but I knew that if I had excited in her the same interest she had awakened in me, this would not be necessary; our friendship would grow of itself and blossom without any hot-house forcing. And so it did. One day she came to the riding-school with her eyes like stars and her cheeks like the oleanders in your sitting-room. Her brightness was so contagious, I stepped up to her. But she greeted me with almost formal reserve, and mounting her horse, proceeded to engage in her usual exercise. I was not hurt; I recognized the presence of some thought or feeling which made a barrier around her sensitive nature, and duly respected it. Mounting my own horse, I rode around the ring which is the somewhat limited field of my present equestrian efforts, and waited. For I knew from the looks which she cast me every now and then, that the flower of our friendship was outgrowing its sheath and would soon burst into the bud of perfect understanding. At the end of the lesson we approached each other. I do not know how it was done, but we walked home together, or rather I accompanied her to the stoop of her house, and before we parted we had exchanged those words which give emphasis to a sentiment long cherished but now for the first time avowed. Miss Stuyvesant and I are friends, and I feel as though a new stream of enjoyment had opened in my breast.
“The fact that I still call her by this formal title instead of her very pretty name of Cicely, proves the nature of the respect she inspires even in the breasts of her girlish associates.”
“Why is it that I frequently hesitate as I go up the stairs and look about me with a vague feeling of apprehension? The bronze figure of Luxury that adorns the landing, wears no semblance of terror to the wildest imagination, and yet I often find myself seized by an inexplicable shudder as I hurry past it; and once I actually looked behind me with the same sensation as if some one had plucked me by the sleeve.