A FACE AT THE WINDOW.
Sympathy
Must call her in love's name, and then, I know,
She rises up and brightens as she should,
And lights her smile for comfort, and is slow
In nothing of high-hearted fortitude.
Adèle kept her word. She set her wits to work with such good effect that the next morning found her and her cousin in the carriage, under the conduct of the stately coachman, on their way to that unfashionable locality, the neighborhood of Islington.
They had started, presumably, on a shopping excursion, the delusion being maintained by two or three stoppages in Regent street, after which, by Arthur's direction, they drove to the vicinity of The Angel, where carriage and coachman were left in waiting, the remainder of the way being made on foot for the sake of the preservation of their secret.
It had been agreed between them that Adèle should pay a visit to Margaret, Arthur waiting for her at the entrance of the narrow street where she lodged. The object of her visit was in the present instance only to inquire after Mrs. Grey's health, to take a kindly interest in her welfare, and to try and persuade her to accept their offer of friendship: it had been decided between them that upon this occasion Arthur's name should not be mentioned. Adèle had taken upon herself the office of simply paving the way for further intercourse—of preventing Mrs. Grey from escaping them altogether. This, with her quiet tact and gentle sympathy, she did not despair of accomplishing, if fate would only be commonly propitious, for Adèle was really in earnest. Putting self out of the way, she had thrown herself heart and soul into her cousin's scheme, and all the more readily, it may be, from the affection which had arisen spontaneously in her own heart at the sight of Margaret's pure, calm beauty.
Adèle was only eighteen, and eighteen is an impressionable age, open not only to accesses of what is called the tender passion, but to feelings perhaps much tenderer and fairer, for the souls of the very young, especially among women, are keenly susceptible to the subtle influences of beauty and grace; it is not uncommon for a young girl to be deeply, jealously enamored of one of her own sex; to experience the delights, the tremors, the anxieties of love itself, and far more palpably than in any of the necessary flirtations that diversify her budding womanhood. Beauty is the embodiment of the young girl's dream, and beauty she finds more visibly in her own sex than in the other.
The first loving emotion of Milton's Eve was for the fair watery image that represented herself in all the radiant charms of female loveliness. It was only afterward that she discovered
"How beauty is excelled by manly grace,
And wisdom, which alone is truly fair."
Adèle was in this first stage, and Margaret seemed to her the living embodiment of all that had so often won and fascinated her in poetry and romance. The evident mystery that surrounded the fair stranger, her sadness, her lonely friendless position, all added to the spell.
The first emotion of wounded self-love over, Adèle ceased to wonder at Arthur's desertion, or even to grieve over it, and was ready to go through fire and water for their common divinity.