“I do mean it. I have long and ardently wished it. The consciousness of my unworthiness has till now sealed my lips, but I cannot keep silence longer. My affection has grown too strong for the restraints imposed upon it. Give me your daughter, dearer to me for her blindness, more precious for her helplessness, and I will guard her as the richest treasure ever bestowed on man.”
Mrs. Hazleton was greatly agitated. She had always looked on Alice as excluded by her misfortune from the usual destiny of her sex, as consecrated from her birth for a vestal’s lot. She had never thought of her being wooed as a wife, and she repelled the idea as something sacrilegious.
“Impossible, Louis,” she answered. “You know not what you ask. My Alice is set apart, by her Maker’s will, from the sympathies of love. I have disciplined her for a life of loneliness. She looks forward to no other. Disturb not, I pray thee, the holy simplicity of her feelings, by inspiring hopes which never can be realized.”
“Speak, Alice,” cried Louis, “and tell your mother all you just now said to me. Let me be justified in her eyes.”
Alice lifted her downcast, blushing face, while the tears rolled gently from her beautiful, sightless eyes.
“Mother, dear mother, forgive me if I have done wrong, but I cannot help my heart’s throbbing more quickly at the echo of his footsteps or the music of his voice. And when he asked me to be his wife and be ever with him, I could not help feeling that it would make me the happiest of human beings. Oh, mother, you cannot know how kind, how good, how tender he has been to me. The world never looks dark when he is near.”
Alice bowed her head on the shoulder of Louis, while her fair ringlets swept in shining wreaths over her face.
“This is so unexpected!” cried Mrs. Hazleton. “I must speak with your parents.”
“I come with their full consent and approbation. Alice will take the place of Helen in the household, and prevent the aching void that would be left.”
“Alas! what can Alice do?”