And while they pursued their work Alice, from her rustic seat, watched them. Alice, looking as serenely happy as though her heart had never been broken, her brain never been crazed by calamity, anguish, and despair verging upon madness; as healthful, amiable, and self-possessed as though she had never sworn in her frenzy that she could not survive the severance from Sinclair; that neither moral, intellectual, nor physical nature could stand the test—the misery of a life with Garnet.
But Divine Providence is kind, and nature is full of remedial power. We have all strength given us according to our need. If our joys are greater in anticipation than in realization, so certainly are our sorrows.
Alice, in the terrible storm of passion that had temporarily dethroned her reason, believed that she could not outlive her marriage; yet she had lived twelve years, and was comparatively happy—possibly happier than many a girl who had married for love, or its semblance.
It is true that from the hour she awoke from the strange torpor that immediately followed her marriage her religious principles had taught her to turn from the memory of Sinclair, whenever that memory recurred. She prayed against, she strove against it, wrenched her thoughts forcibly from it, and riveted them to something else. And her prayers and struggles had produced this happy effect. The image of Sinclair had faded away with the brightest visions of her girlhood. And now that that typhoon of youthful passion had long passed, and even its memory had almost faded away, her genial, affectionate, religious nature made her happy. With such a nature Alice could not live without forming attachments to those around her. He must have been a terrible brute who could not have been blessed with some portion of her affection by simply living in the house with her for twelve years. And General Garnet was not exactly a brute. He was very handsome, graceful, and accomplished and habitually polite. And now that time had long worn out his jealousy he had ceased all undignified and ungentlemanly interference with his wife’s specially feminine occupations and associations. Alice was happy with her housekeeping, her garden, her dairy, her country neighbors, her favorite Magnus, and her little daughter. Yet, had the Angel of Destiny whispered to her heart this alternative: “Your daughter! two fates await her—to die in her childhood, or live to be an unwilling bride—choose for her!” Alice would have answered with a shudder and without a moment’s hesitation: “Let her die in her childhood rather. Let her die now, rather!” And to have saved her from the misery of wedding one she could not love, Alice would have been content to lay her heart’s only treasure, her idolized child, in the grave.
But no such question of Destiny had yet called back the memory of the past, and Alice was happy as she drew out her knitting-needle and smiled at the boy and girl on the terrace.
At last the sketch was finished and Magnus pronounced it perfect, and threw his shoulders back with a yawn of relief, and brought his hands together with a ring, exclaiming, as he turned to Alice:
“Now, cousin, let me order the horses and let us ride at once to the beach. Why, here’s Goliah come from the post office—with a letter, too!”
“It is from the general, madam,” continued Magnus, receiving the letter from the boy and handing it to Alice. She opened and glanced through it. Then turning to the expectant child, she said:
“Elsie, your father will be home this evening. He will bring with him Judge Wylie, Mr. Ulysses Wylie, Mr. Hardcastle, and Mr. Lionel Hardcastle. He requests me to have supper ready for the party.”
Alice was soon superintending the preparations for supper. She had a good deal of the pride of the housekeeper and the hostess about her. Every Maryland woman has.