That night, when Edith laid her head on her pillow, she felt a secret joy, a lightness of heart, which she could not understand. She reproached herself that she could feel so happy so soon after the death of her father. She did not know how insensibly she had suffered an interest in Seymore to grow in her heart, and that the sentiments of nature are weak when brought into contact with an absorbing passion. When she came to offer her prayer for guidance and protection, a feeling of gratitude, of thankfulness, overpowered all other emotions, and she closed her eyes, wet with grateful tears.
CHAPTER XII.
"Is this a tale?
Methinks it is a homily."
Seymore indulged himself with a few days of perfect, unalloyed happiness. The tumultuous feeling of joy subsided, the dark shade that had begun to gather over his mind vanished, and a sober certainty of bliss—bliss too great, he feared, for mortal, appeased his too keen sensibility to his own imperfections.
The character of Edith was formed to produce this effect. There was nothing exaggerated in it. Her solitary life, without mother or sister, had taught her great self-reliance; while her genuine humility had preserved her from that obstinacy of opinion that a want of knowledge of the world sometimes creates. The grave and solid studies she had entered into with her father had strengthened her mind, as it were, with the "bark and steel" of literature; while the native tenderness of her heart had prevented her from becoming that odious creature, a female pedant. Her greatest charm was the exquisite feminineness of her character: this perhaps, without religion, would have degenerated into weakness, or, without an enlightened reason, into superstition.
How entirely is the divine spirit of Christianity adapted to woman's nature! loving as she does, and trembling for the objects of her love; doomed
"To weep silent tears, and patient smiles to wear,
And to make idols, and to find them clay."
If ever woman enjoyed all worldly advantages, if ever she was flattered, made an idol, and worshipped, it was in Europe previous to the French Revolution. Yet the letters and memoirs of the women of that time, light and frivolous as they are, reveal a depth of sadness, a desolation of spirit, a weariness of life,—destitute as many of them are of all aspiration after an immortal hope,—that tells us how indispensable to woman's nature are the hopes and consolations of religion. Love was at that time the object of woman's existence,—a love that, with our standard of morals, leaves a stain as well as a wound; but, with their peculiar notions, it robbed them neither of the adulation of society, nor of their own self-respect. But, with all this, together with their influence in the affairs of state, we read their memoirs not only with a shame that burns on the cheek, but with feelings of the deepest commiseration.