"I could no more tell the colour of her eyes, than I could paint yon twinkling star, or her hair either. I only know that they shed a kind of glory over her countenance, and mantled her brow with the softest and most exquisite shades."
"I declare, Henry," cried Mrs. Wentworth, "you are the most extravagant being I ever knew. I don't know whether you are in jest or earnest."
"Oh! you may be sure he is in earnest," said Miss Hart. "I know whom he means very well. It is Miss Carroll. Lois Carroll, the grand-daughter of old Mr. Carroll, the former minister of —— church. The old lady with whom she sat is her aunt. They live somewhere in the suburbs of the city—but never go anywhere except to church. They say she is the most complete little methodist in the world."
"What do you mean by a methodist?" asked Henry abruptly—"an enthusiast?"
"One who never goes to the theatre, never attends the ballroom, thinks it a sin to laugh, and goes about among poor people to give them doctor's stuff, and read the Bible."
"Well," answered Henry, "I see nothing very appalling in this description. If ever I marry, I have no very great desire that my wife should frequent the theatre or the ballroom. She might admire artificial graces at the one and exhibit them in the other, but the loveliest traits of her sex must fade and wither in the heated atmosphere of both. And I am sure it is a divine office to go about ministering to the wants of the poor and healing the sick. As to the last item, I may not be a proper judge, but I do think a beautiful woman reading the Bible to the afflicted and dying, must be the most angelic object in the universe."
"Why, brother," said Mrs. Wentworth, "what a strange compound you are! Such a rattle-brain as you, moralizing like a second Johnson!"
"I may be a wild rattle-brain, and sport like a thousand others in the waves of fashion, but there is something here, Jane," answered he, laying his hand half seriously, half sportively on his breast, "that tells me that I was created for immortality; that, spendthrift of time, I am still bound for eternity. I have often pictured the future, in my musing hours, and imagined a woman's gentle hand was guiding me in the path that leads to heaven."
Mrs. Wentworth looked at her brother in astonishment. There was something in the solemnity of his expressions that alarmed her, coming from one so gay and apparently thoughtless. Miss Hart was alarmed too, but from a different cause. She thought it time to aim her shaft, and she knew in what course to direct it.
"This Miss Carroll," said she, "whom you admire so much, has lately lost her lover, to whom she was devotedly attached. He was her cousin, and they had been brought up together from childhood, and betrothed from that period. She nursed him during a long sickness, day and night, and many thought she would follow him to the grave, her grief was so great."