She glanced towards Edith, whose beautiful face was paler and thinner than it was wont to be. She had pined for the brother of whom I had robbed her; for the world offered her nothing to fill the void left in the depths of her loving heart. We were all happier together. We cannot give ourselves up to the dominion of an exclusive passion, whatever it may be, without an outrage to nature, which sooner or later revenges the wrong inflicted. With all my romantic love for Ernest, I had often sighed for the companionship of one of my own sex; and now, restored to Edith, whom I had always regarded a little lower than the angels, I felt that if love was more rapturous than friendship, it was not more divine.
They knew that I had suffered. They had sympathized with me, pitied me,—(if Mrs. Linwood blamed me for imprudence, she never expressed it); and I felt that they loved me better for having passed under the cloud. There was no allusion made to the awful events which were present in the minds of all, on our first reunion. If Mrs. Linwood noticed, that after the glow of excitement faded from my cheek it was paler than it was wont to be, she did not tell me so, but her kiss was more tender, her glance more kind. There was something in her mild, expressive eyes, that I translated thus:—
"Thank God that another hand than Ernest's has stolen the rose from thy cheek of youth. Better, far better to be humbled by a father's crimes, than blighted by a husband's jealousy."
This evening reminded me so much of the first I ever passed with Ernest. He asked Edith for the music of her harp; and I sat in the recess of the window, in the shadow of the curtains, through whose transparent drapery the moonbeams stole in and kissed my brow. Ernest came and sat down beside me, and my hand was clasped in his. As the sweet strains floated round us, they seemed to mingle with the moonlight, and my spirit was borne up on waves of brightness and melody. Always before, when listening to Edith's angelic voice, I had wished for the same enchanting power. I had felt that thus I could sing, I could play, had art developed the gifts of nature, only with deeper passion and sensibility; but now I listened without conscious desire,—passive, happy, willing to receive, without desiring to impart. I felt like the pilgrim who, after a sultry day of weariness, pauses by a cool spring, and, laying himself down beneath its gushing, suffers the stream to flow over him,—till, penetrated by their freshness, his soul seems a fountain of living waters. Oh! the divine rapture of repose, after restlessness and conflict! I had passed the breakers. Henceforth my life would be calm and placid as the beams that illumined the night.
And now I am tempted to lay down the pen. I would not weary thee, friend of my lonely hours, whoever thou art, by a repetition of scenes which show how poor and weak are the strongest human resolutions, when temptations assail and passions rise with the swell and the might of the stormy billows. But if I record weaknesses and errors, such as seldom sadden the annals of domestic life, it is that God may be glorified in the humiliation of man. It is that the light of the sun of righteousness may be seen to arise with healing in his beams, while the mists of error and the clouds of passion are left rolling below.
Yes! We were all happy for a while, and in the midst of such pure, reviving influences, I became blooming and elastic as a mountain maid. Dr. Harlowe was the same kind, genial, warm-hearted friend. Mr. Regulus, the same—no, he was changed,—improved, softened still more than when he surprised me by his graces, in my metropolitan home. He looked several years younger, and a great deal handsomer.
Had Margaret wrought this improvement? Had she indeed supplanted me in my tutor's guileless heart? I inquired of Edith after the wild creature, whom I suspected some secret influence was beginning to tame.
"Oh! you have no idea how Madge is improved, since her visit to you," she answered. "She sometimes talks sensibly for five minutes at a time, and I have actually caught her singing and playing a sentimental air. Mamma says if she were in love with a man of sense and worth, he might make of her a most invaluable character."
"Mr. Regulus, for instance!" said I.
Edith laughed most musically.