"I did."
A deathlike silence followed this avowal, which was at last broken by Henrietta, who said in a low whisper, "Then at last you know me!"
"Oh! do not say so;—do not say that the fearful words that I heard were spoken in earnest!—Do not say that;—I cannot bear to hear it!"
"Poor girl!—poor Rosalind!" said Henrietta, in a voice of the deepest melancholy. "I have always wished to spare you this—I have always wished to spare myself the pain of reading abhorrence in the eyes of one that I do believe I could have loved, had not my heart been dead."
"But if you feel thus, Henrietta,—if indeed you know that such words as I heard you utter must raise abhorrence,—it is because that you yourself must hate them. I know you are unhappy—I know that your nature scorns the faults that are but too conspicuous in your father; but is it not beneath a mind of such power as yours to think there is no God in heaven, because one weak and wicked man has worshipped him amiss?"
"He worship!—Trust me, Rosalind, had I been the child of a Persian, and seen him, in spirit and in truth, worshipping the broad sun as it looked down from heaven upon earth, making its fragrant dews rise up to him in incense, I should not have been the wretched thing I am,—for I should have worshipped too."
"Henrietta!—If to behold the Maker of the universe, and the Redeemer whom he sent to teach his law—if to see worship offered to their eternal throne could teach you to worship too, then look around you. Look at the poor in heart, the humble, pious Christians who, instead of uttering the horrible doom of eternal damnation upon their fellow-men, live and die in the delightful hope that all shall one day meet in the presence of their God and Father, chastised, purified, and pleading, to his everlasting mercy, with the promised aid of his begotten Son, for pardon and for peace.—Look out for this, Henrietta, and you will find it. Find it, and your heart will be softened, and you will share the healing balm that makes all the sorrow and suffering of this life seem but as the too close fitting of a heavy garment that galls but for an hour!"
"Dear, innocent Rosalind!—How pure and beautiful your face looks in the bright moonlight!—But, alas! I know that very sinful faces may look just as fair. There is no truth to rest on. In the whole wide world, Rosalind, there is not honesty enough whereon to set a foot, that one may look around and believe, at least, that what one sees, one sees. But this is a perfection of holiness—a species of palpable and present divinity, that is only granted to mortals in their multiplication tables.—Twice two are four—I feel sure of it,—but my faith goes no farther."
"I cannot talk to you," cried Rosalind in great agitation; "I am not capable of doing justice to this portentous theme, on which hangs the eternal life of all the men that have been, are, and shall be. It is profane in me to speak of it,—a child—a worm. Father of mercy, forgive me!" she cried suddenly dropping upon her knees.
Henrietta uttered a cry which almost amounted to a shriek. "I had almost listened to you!" she exclaimed,—"I had almost believed that your voice was the voice of truth; but now you put yourself in that hateful posture, and what can I think of you, but that you are all alike—all juggling—all! The best of ye juggle yourselves,—the worst do as we saw Mr. Cartwright do;—on that very spot, Rosalind, beneath the shelter of that very tree, did he not too knuckle down? and for what?—to lure and cajole a free and innocent spirit to be as false and foul as himself! Yet this is the best trick of which you can bethink you to teach the sceptical Henrietta that there is a God."