There are states of the mind when the note of a bird, the fall of a leaf, the perfume of a flower, will unlock the bars of the soul, as the smallest sound will loosen the avalanche. The unexpected sight of her mother's picture had overpowered Edith. O that we should receive a mother's love in infancy, when we cannot value or understand it; and, in after life, when we need it most, when we long for the heart that has cherished us, "we must go back to some almost forgotten grave," where that warm heart lies that loved us as no other will ever love us.
Seymore was terrified: he had never seen grief like this, and he walked the room with rapid and agitated steps.
Edith longed to be alone. She tried to conquer her emotion, but the sobs that came from the bottom of her heart shook her whole frame. At last she said, "Pray leave me; I wish to be, I must be alone."
Seymore could not leave her thus. He took her passive hand. "O," said he, "would that I could spare you one of these tears! If you could know how I reverence your sorrow, how my heart bleeds for you—O pardon me—if you could see my heart, you would see there a devotion, a reverence, such as angels feel in heaven. Might I dare to hope that you would forgive, that you would pardon the poor, unknown, homeless scholar, that he has dared to love you?"
Edith had become calm as he spoke thus impetuously, and her hand grew cold in his. She looked up: a beautiful and timid hope shone in her eyes; and, though her tears fell fast, a smile was on her lips. "We are both homeless," she said,—"both orphans."
He caught from her expression a rapturous hope. At this moment the faithful slave Dinah opened the door to look after her young mistress. It was the first time since her childhood, that the face of her sable friend had been unwelcome to Edith; but perhaps it was happy for both; it arrested their tumultuous emotions, and gave Seymore, who left the room immediately, time to arrange his thoughts, and reflect on the blissful prospect opening before him.
Edith held out her hand to her friend. I have before remarked the figurative expressions in which Dinah clothed her thoughts. Her language and her feelings were fervid, like her climate.
"I thought," she said, "the heartsease had withered in your bosom; but it has sprung up, and is blooming again." Then seeing the crimson overspread Edith's cheek, she added, "perhaps your warm tears have revived it." But, as if ashamed of having said something not perfectly true, she took Edith's hand, looked earnestly in her face, as if asking an explanation of this sudden change.
Edith was wholly overcome. She threw herself into the arms of the faithful slave, and longed to hide herself there. None but a mother could understand her feelings, or one who had been to her in the place of a mother, and knew every beating of her innocent heart.
There are moments when woman needs the sympathy of a mother, that first and dearest friend of every human being. Dinah could not understand the imaginative character of Edith's mind; she could not sympathize with her thirst for knowledge, her love of the beautiful and the unknown; but the tear in her eye, and her quivering lip, as she pressed her child closer and closer to her, as though she would cherish her in her inmost heart, showed that she understood her nature, and sympathized in her happiness with all a woman's heart.