"After a while? What hope has after a while? It cannot bring back the lost; and does memory ever die? After a while has not given me my mother; after a while has not taught me to forget her, or made me more patient in my waiting. After a while I know death will come to us all, and then there will be no more heartache; but I can't see that there is any comfort in after a while, except beyond the grave. Mrs. Lindsay, I do not wish to be wicked or rebellious, but it seems very hard that I must leave this dear quiet home, and be separated from you and Mr. Lindsay whom I dearly love, and go and live in a city, with that cold, hard, harsh, stern man, of whom I am so much afraid. He may mean well, but he has such unkind ways of showing it. You have no idea how dreadful the future looks to me."
She spoke drearily, and in the fitful flashes of the firelight the young face looked unnaturally stern.
"My dear child, you must not despond; at your age one must try to see only the bright side. If I expected to remain in America, I would not give you up without a struggle; would beg your mother's permission to keep you until she claimed you. But I shall only wait to learn that Douglass has arranged for my arrival. As you know, my sister and brother-in-law are in Egypt, and if I were with them in Cairo, I could hear more regularly and frequently from my dear boy. I wish I could keep you, for you have grown deep into my heart, but my own future is too uncertain to allow me to involve any one else in my plans."
"I understand the circumstances, but if mother only knew everything, I believe she would not doom me to the care of that man of stone. Oh, if you could only take me across the ocean, and let me go to Venice to mother."
Mrs. Lindsay tightened her arm around the erect slender figure, and gently stroked back the hair from her temples.
"My dear, you paint your future guardian too grimly. Mr. Palma is very reserved, rather haughty, and probably stern, but notwithstanding has a noble character, I am told, and certainly appears much interested in and kindly disposed toward you. Dear Peyton liked him exceedingly, and his two letters to me were full of generosity and kind sympathy. As I believe I told you, his stepmother resides with him, and her daughter Miss Neville, though a young lady, will be more of a companion for you than the older members of the household. Mr. Palma is one of the most eminent and popular lawyers in New York, is very ambitious, I have heard, and at his house you will meet the best society of that great city; by which I mean the most cultivated, high-toned, and aristocratic people. I am sorry that he has no religious views, habits, or associations, as I inferred from the remarks of the lady whom I met in Boston, and who seemed well acquainted with the Palma household. She told me 'none of that family had any religion, though of course they kept a pew in the fashionable church.' But, my dear little girl, I hope your principles and rules of life are sufficiently established to preserve you from all free-thinking tendencies. Constant attendance at church does not constitute religion, any more than the bonâ fide pulpit means the spiritual Gospel; but I have noticed that where genuine piety exists, it is generally united with a recognition of church duties and obligations. The case of books I packed and sent with your trunks contains some very admirable though old-fashioned works, written by such women as Hannah More, Mrs. Chapone, Mrs. Opie, and others, to mould the character of girls, and instruct them in all that is requisite to make them noble, refined, intelligent, useful Christian women. Hannah More's 'Lucilla Stanley' is one of the loveliest portraitures of female excellence in the whole domain of literature, and you will find some of the passages marked to arrest your attention. In this age of rapid deviation from the standard rules that governed feminine deportment and education when I was a girl, many of the precepts and admonitions penned by the authors I have mentioned are derided and repudiated as 'puritanical,' 'old-fashioned,' 'strait-laced,' 'stupid and prudish'; but if these indeed be faults, certainly in the light of modern innovations they appear 'to lean to virtue's side.' In fashionable society, such as you are destined to meet at Mr. Palma's, you will find many things that no doubt will impress you as strange, possibly wrong; but in all these matters consult the books I have selected for you, read your Bible, pray regularly, and under all circumstances hold fast to your principles. Question and listen to your conscience, and no matter how keen the ridicule, or severe the condemnation to which your views may subject you, stand firm. Moral cowardice is the inclined plane that leads to the first step in sin. Be sure you are right, and then suffer no persuasion or invective to influence you in questions involving conscientious scruples. You are young and peculiarly isolated, therefore I have given you a letter to my valued old friend Mrs. Mason, who will always advise you judiciously, if you will only consult her. I hope you will devote as much time as possible to music, for to one gifted with your rare talent it will serve as a sieve straining out every ignoble discordant suggestion, and will help to keep your thoughts pure and holy."
"I suppose there are wicked ways and wicked people everywhere, and it is not the fashion or the sinfulness that I am afraid of in New York, but the loneliness I anticipate. I dread being shut up between brick walls: no flowers, no grass, no cows, no birds, no chickens, none of the things I care for most."
"But, my dear child, you forget that you have entered your fifteenth year, and as you grow older you will gradually lose your inordinate fondness for pets. Your childish tastes will change as you approach womanhood."
"I hope not. Why should they? When I am an old woman with white hair, spectacles, wrinkled cheeks, and a ruffled muslin cap like poor Hannah's, I expect to love pigeons and rabbits, and all pretty white things, just as dearly as I do now. Speaking of Hannah, how I shall miss her? Since she went away, I shun the kitchen as much as possible,—everything is so changed, so sad. Oh! the dear, dear old-dead-and-gone-days will never, never come back to me."
For some time neither spoke. Mrs. Lindsay wept, the girl only groaned in spirit; and at length she said suddenly, like one nerved for some painful task: