HOW ADÈLE RECEIVES THE DISCLOSURE.
The woman who loves should indeed
Be the friend of the man that she loves. She should heed
Not her selfish and often mistaken desires,
But his interest whose fate her own interest inspires.
And this, then, was the awakening? Like almost every thing in this wayward world of ours, it scarcely chimed in with the ideas and plans that had been formed concerning it.
Adèle had often mourned her cousin's frivolity, but she was young and hopeful. He was only a boy, she had told herself. Some of the great things in the world—its art, its literature, its science, the grand sphere of politics or the grander field of benevolence—would sooner or later throw chains about his spirit, so that, following where it led, he too, with herself perhaps as a twin attendant star, like the "Laon and Laone" of Shelley, might take a place in the poet's divine temple of genius, and live a life not utterly in vain in its influences on humanity.
She had even thought to arouse him herself, that by love he might rise, as others had done before him, to something higher than the fashionable life of self-pleasing. But of this she had never thought—that love indeed, but the love of another woman, should be the motive-power rousing his soul to earnestness. For she could not be mistaken. The change that had come to him—which change, she could not but remember as she cast her thoughts over the past few days, had dated from that memorable afternoon at the Academy—the impressive way in which he had told her of his thought, the quiet earnestness of his manner, all tended to the revelation of a fact—one that she would have put away indignantly had she not been forced to look it in the face. Arthur was in love, and not with her.
The beautiful woman whom in her youthful enthusiasm she had admired—loved even for her very loveliness—had won her cousin's heart. He loved Margaret Grey as he had never loved her, his cousin, the friend of his youth and childhood: with her he had remained a boy; her beautiful rival had roused the dormant fire within him, and suddenly the boy had put on his manhood.
These were some of the thoughts that crowded bewilderingly on Adèle's brain as they sat together on the sofa—she and her cousin—with his strange confession between them. He was waiting to hear what she would say; she was for the first few moments unable to speak. On the table before them lay the forgotten volume of the Faërie Queene; at their feet, in sweet confusion, were the scattered flowers fallen from Adèle's lap. She sat perfectly still, her hands crossed and her eyes cast down; he looked at her with some earnestness, and perhaps a little surprise.
Arthur's affection for Adèle was of a calm, brotherly kind, and he had always imagined that she cared for him in very much the same manner.
Hitherto, indeed, he had not been in a position to gauge the heights and depths of that mysterious, volatile essence which young mortals dignify by the fair name of love. But now, with this new light in his own heart, he was better able to understand his cousin's, and in her downcast face he thought he read her secret.
It made him tender instantly. Young men and old men are alike in this. Whether loving or not themselves, they are pleased when they find out, by indubitable signs, that they have inspired the sentiment; and this knowledge makes them, for the moment, strangely gentle and sympathetic.