“Do you think it possible that she could alter my opinion of you?” said Clinton, in a low, earnest tone. “If any thing could have exalted it, it would be the dignity and forbearance with which you bore her insinuations, and defeated her malice.”
“I am sorry, Mittie,” cried Louis, touched by her paleness and emotion, and attributing it entirely to wounded feeling, “I am very sorry that I have been the indirect cause of giving you pain. It was certainly unintentional. Miss Thusa was in rather a savage mood this evening, I must acknowledge; but she is not malicious, Clinton. With all her eccentricities, she has some sterling virtues. If you could only see her inspired, and hear one of her powerful tales!”
“If you ever induce him to go there a second time!” exclaimed Mittie, withdrawing herself from the arm with which he had encircled her waist, and giving him a glance from her dark, bright eyes, that might have scorched him, it was so intensely, dazzlingly angry.
“Believe me,” said Clinton, “no inducement could tempt me again to a place associated with painful remembrances in your mind.”
He had not seen the glance, for he was walking on the other side, and when she turned towards him, in answer to his soothing remark, the starry moon of night is not more darkly beautiful or resplendent than her face.
So he told her when Louis left them at the gate leading to their dwelling, and so he told her again when they were walking alone together in the star-bright night.
“Why do they talk to me of Helen?” said he, and his voice stole through the stilly air as gently as the falling dew. “What can she be, in comparison with you? Little did I think Louis had another sister so transcendent, when I saw you standing on the rustic bridge, the most radiant vision that ever beamed on the eye of mortal. You remember that evening. All the sunbeams of Heaven gathered around you, the focus of the golden firmament.”
“Louis loves me not as he does Helen,” replied Mittie, her heart bounding with rapture at his glowing praises, “no one does. Even you, who now profess to love me beyond all created beings, if Helen came, might be lured by her attractions to forget all you have been breathing into my ears.”
“I confess I should like to see one whose attractions you can fear. She must be superlatively lovely.”
“She is not beautiful nor lovely, Clinton. No one ever called her so. Fear! I never knew the sensation of fear. It is not fear that she could inspire, but a stronger, deeper passion.”