An expression that Edith had never seen, a softened expression of deep tenderness, came over the face of the old woman.
"I was going to speak of this child," she said. "I feel that I shall soon be there,"—and she pointed towards the earth,—"and this child has no friend but me."
The little girl, meantime, had crept close to the old woman, and laid her head on her shoulder. The child was not attractive: her feet and legs were bare, and her dress was ragged and much soiled; but covering her eyes and forehead was a profusion of golden-colored ringlets; and, where her skin was not grimmed with dirt and exposure to the sea air, it was delicately white.
There was something touching in the affection of the poor orphan for the old woman; and the contrast, as they thus leant on each other, would have arrested the eye of a painter.
Edith promised to be a friend to her grandchild, and then entreated Nanny to see her father, and confide her sorrows to him. This she steadily refused; and Edith left her, her young spirits saddened by the mystery and the grief that she could not understand. As she walked home, she thought how little the temper of the old woman was in harmony with the external beauty that environed her. The beauty was marred by sin and grief. And even in her own life, pure as it was, how little was there to harmonize with the exquisite loveliness around her!
Edith was not happy: the inward pulse did not beat in harmony with the pulse of nature. She was not happy, because woman, especially in youth, is happy only in her affections. She felt within herself an infinite capacity of loving, and she had few to love, Her heart was solitary. Her affection for her father partook too much of respect and awe; and that for Dinah had grown up from her infancy, and was as much a matter of habit as of gratitude. She longed for the love of an equal, or rather of some one she could reverence as well as love. How she wished she could have been the companion of the Lady Ursula!
Edith was beginning to feel that she had a soul of infinite longings; but she had not yet learnt its power to create for itself an infinite and immortal happiness; and the beauty of nature, that excited without filling her mind, only increased her loneliness.
It is after other pursuits and other friends have disappointed us, that we go back to the beautiful teachings of nature; and, like a tender mother, she receives us to her bosom.
"O, nature never did betray
The heart that loved her."
She alone is unchangeable. We may confide in her promises. I have planted an acorn by a beloved grave: in a few years I returned, and found a beautiful oak overshadowing it.