As I said this, I suffered my arm to rest more firmly on his, for my steps were indeed weary, and we were now ascending the hill. My heart was deeply touched by his kindness, and the involuntary ejaculations he uttered, the involuntary caresses he bestowed, when he believed me perfectly unconscious, were treasured sacredly there. We were now by the large elm-tree that shaded the way-side, beneath whose boughs I had so often paused to gaze on the valley below. Without speaking, he led me to this resting-place, and we both looked back, as wayfarers are wont to do when they stop in an ascending path.
Calmly the shadows rested on the landscape, softly yet darkly they rolled down the slope of the neighboring hills and the distant mountains. In thin curlings, the gray smoke floated upwards and lay slumberously among the fleecy clouds. Here and there a mansion, lifted above the rest, shed from its glowing windows the reflection of departing day. Bright on the dusky gold of the west the evening-star shone and throbbed, like a pure love-thought in the heart of night; and, dimly glimmering above the horizon, the giant pen seemed writing the Mene Tekel of my clouded destiny on the palace walls of heaven.
As we thus stood, lifted above the valley, involved in shadows, silent and alone, I could hear the beating of my heart, louder and louder in the breathing stillness.
"Gabriella!" said Ernest, in a low voice, and that master-chord which no hand but his had touched, thrilled at the sound. "If the spot on which we stand were a desert island, and the valley stretching around us the wide waste of ocean, and we the only beings in the solitude of nature, with your hand thus clasped in mine, and my heart thus throbbing near, with a love so strong, so deep, it would be to you in place of the whole world beside,—tell me, could you be happy?"
"I could," was the low, irresistible answer; and my soul, like an illuminated temple, flashed with inward light. I covered my eyes to keep in the dazzling rays. I forgot the sad history of wrongs and disgrace which I had just been perusing;—I forgot that such words had breathed into my mother's ear, and that she believed them. I only remembered that Ernest Linwood loved me, and that love surrounded me with a luminous atmosphere, in which joy and hope fluttered their heavenly wings.
How slight a thing will change the current of thought! I caught a glimpse of the granite walls of Grandison Place, and darkened by the shades, they seemed to frown upon me with their high turret and lofty colonnade, so ancestral and imposing. Then I remembered Mrs. Linwood and Edith,—then I remembered my mother, my father, and all the light went out in my heart.
"I had forgotten,—oh, how much I had forgotten," I cried, endeavoring to release myself from the arm that only tightened its hold. "Your mother never would forgive my presumption if she thought,—if she knew."
"My mother loves you; but even if she did not, I am free to act, free to choose, as every man should be. I love and revere my mother, but there is a passion stronger than filial love and reverence, which goes on conquering and to conquer. She will not, she cannot oppose me."
"But Edith, dear Edith, who loves you so devotedly! She will hate me if I dare to supplant her."
"A sister never can be supplanted,—and least of all such a sister as Edith, Gabriella. If you do not feel that love so expands, so enlarges the heart, that it makes room for all the angels in heaven, you could not share my island home."