“My sister, my Helen, my own dear pupil,” said Arthur Hazleton, and the rich glow of the morning was not deeper nor brighter than the color that mantled his cheek. “How well and blooming you look! They told me you were ill and could not be disturbed last night. I did not hope to see you so brilliant in health and spirits. And who crowned you so gayly, the fair queen of the morning?”
“I don’t know,” she cried, taking the chaplet from her head and shaking the dew-drops from its leaves, “and yet I suspect it was Mr. Clinton, who came behind me while I was standing by yonder beech tree.”
Arthur’s serious, dark eye rested on the young girl with a searching, anxious expression, as Clinton approached and paid the compliments of the morning with more than his wonted gracefulness of manner. He apologized for the freedom he had taken so sportively and naturally, that Helen felt it would be ridiculous in her to assume a resentment she did not feel, and yielding to her passionate admiration for flowers, she wreathed them again round her sun-bright locks.
It was thus the trio approached the house. Mittie saw them from the window, and the keenest pang she had ever known penetrated her heart. She saw the beech tree shorn of its morning garland, that garland which was blooming triumphantly on her sister’s brow. She saw Clinton walking by her side, calling up her smiles and blushes according to his own magnetic will.
She accused Helen of deceit and guile. Her languor and illness the preceding evening was all assumed to heighten the blooming contrast of the present moment. Her morning ramble and meeting with Clinton were all premeditated, her seeming artlessness the darkest and deepest hypocrisy.
For a few weeks Mittie had revelled in the joy of an awakened nature. She had reigned alone, with no counter influence to thwart the sudden and luxuriant growth of passion. She, alone, young, beautiful and attractive, had been the magnet to youth, beauty and attraction. She had been the centre of an island world of her own, which she had tried to keep as inaccessible to others as the granite coast in the Arabian Nights.
Poor Mittie! The flower of passion has ever a dark spot on its petals, a dark, purple spot, not always perceptible in the first unfolding and glory of its bloom; but sooner or later it spreads and scorches, and shrivels up the heart of the blossom.
She tried to control her excited feelings. She was proud, and had a conviction that she would degrade herself by the exhibition of jealousy and envy. She tried to call up a bloom to her pale cheek, and a smile to her quivering lip, but she was no adept in the art of dissimulation, and when she entered the sitting room, Helen was the first to notice her altered countenance. It was fortunate for all present that Alice had seated herself at the piano, at the solicitation of Louis, and commenced a brilliant overture.
Alice had always loved music, but now that she had learned it as an art, in all its perfectness, it had become the one passion of her life. She lived in the world of sound, and forgot the midnight that surrounded her. It was impossible to look upon her without feeling the truth, that if God closes with Bastile bars one avenue of the senses, He opens another with widening gates “on golden hinges moving.” Alice trembled with ecstacy at her own exquisite melody, like the nightingale whose soft plumage quivers on its breast as it sings. She would raise her sightless eyes to Heaven, following the upward strain with feelings of the most intense devotion. She called music the wind of the soul, the breath of God—and said if it had a color it must be azure.
One by one they all gathered round the blind songstress. Arthur stood behind her, and Helen saw tears glistening in his eyes. She did not wonder at his emotion, for accustomed as she was to hear her, she never could hear Alice sing without feeling a desire to weep.