"Shall you be afraid to go as far as the lime-tree?" asked Rosalind.
"What! The tree of trees? the bower of paradise?—in short, the tree that you and I have once before visited together?"
"The same. There is no point from whence the rising moon is seen to such advantage."
"Come along, then; let us each put on the armour of a good shawl, and steal away from this superlatively dull party by the hall-door."
The two girls walked on together arm-in-arm, both clad in white, both raising a fair young face to the clear heavens, both rejoicing in the sweet breath of evening, heavy with dew-distilling odours. Yet, thus alike, the wide earth is not ample enough to serve as a type whereby to measure the distance that severed them. The adoration, the joy, the hope of Rosalind, as her thoughts rose "from Nature up to Nature's God," beamed from her full eye; thankfulness and love swelled her young heart, and every thought and every feeling was a hymn of praise.
Henrietta, as she walked beside her, though sharing Nature's banquet so lavishly prepared for every sense, like a thankless guest, bestowed no thought upon the hand that gave it. Cold, dark, and comfortless was the spirit within her; she saw that all was beautiful, but remembered not that all was good,—and the thankless heart heaved with no throb of worship to the eternal Creator who made the lovely world, and then made her to use it.
Notwithstanding the interpretation which Rosalind had put upon the works spoken by Henrietta in the morning, and the consolation she had drawn from it, it was not without considerable agitation that she anticipated the conversation she was meditating. "If she were mistaken?—if beneath that pure sky, from whence the eye of Heaven seemed to look down upon them, she were again to hear the same terrific words—how should she answer them? How should she find breath, and strength, and thought, and language, to speak on such a theme?"
She trembled at her own temerity as this fear pressed upon her, and inwardly prayed, in most true and sweet humility, for forgiveness for her presumptuous sin. A prayer so offered never fails of leaving in the breast it springs from a cheering glow, that seems like an assurance of its being heard. Like that science-taught air, which blazes as it exhales itself, prayer—simple, sincere, unostentatious prayer, sheds light and warmth upon the soul that breathes it, even by the act of breathing.
They had, however, reached the seat beneath the lime-tree before Rosalind found courage to begin: and then she said, as they seated themselves beneath the spreading canopy, "Miss Cartwright,—I have a confession to make to you."
"To me?—Pray, what is it? To judge by the place you have chosen for your confessional, it should be something rather solemn and majestical."