“And yours should blanch to marble, girl, at the name of love or marriage!” said the lady, in a low, stern, sad voice.
Her words escaped the ears of Alma, who, leaning forward, clasping her hands, and fixing her eyes earnestly upon the pale face of her mother, said:
“Mamma, mamma, will you let me speak to you from my heart this once?”
The lady did not reply, and her daughter continued:
“Oh, let me speak to you freely, my mother! To whom can I speak, if not to you? Oh, hear me!—for who will hear me if not you? Whom have I in the world but you? And, mother, who have you in the world but me? Between what two in the universe should there be confidence if not between us?—so separated as we seem from all the earth, so isolated, so lonely? Mother, may I speak to you, at least for once, from my heart?”
“Speak on, Alma; I hear you!”
“Mamma, I wish to account for these few, very few, and mostly chance meetings with Norham in the woods. And to do so I must commence at the commencement, and speak of the utter—utter loneliness of my life—the loneliness like living death that has been my lot from the moment of my birth, I think, to the present hour.”
“One would naturally suppose that a condition which had commenced with your birth, Alma, and continued to the present time—since you could have known no other—must have become a second nature.”
“One would think so, perhaps: and yet again, perhaps, such a second nature, formed by unnatural circumstances, could not be so forced upon the first original nature created by God. You may take the chrysalis, and shut it under an inverted glass, and so long as it remains a chrysalis it will be happy in its way; but when it developes into a butterfly, and spreads its wings, must it not pine, and suffocate, and die for want of space, and exercise, and air?”
“What mean you, Alma?”