"And you, Frank, what part will you play in the great world?" he said.
"I know not. My career is in the hands of my only parent, who will come next year to take me hence. My childhood has been wrapped in mystery; and my future, O, who can foretell the future?"
He gazed at me, for the first time, with an earnest and searching gaze. His eyes, large and gray, and capable of the most varied expression, became absent and dreamy.
"You are very beautiful!" he said, as though thinking aloud,—"O, very beautiful! You will marry rich,—yes,—wealth and position will be yours at once."
And as the moon, rising over the brow of the hill, poured her light upon his thoughtful face, he took my hand and said:
"Frank, why is it that certain natures live only in the future or the past—never in the present? Look at ourselves, for instance. Yonder among the trees, bathed in the light of the rising moon, lies the cottage home in which we have passed the happiest, holiest hours of life. Of that home we are not thinking now—we are only looking forward to the future—and yet the time will come, when immersed in the conflict of the world, we will look back to that home, with the same yearning that one, stretched upon the couch of hopeless disease, looks forward to his grave!"
His voice was low and solemn—I never forgot his words. We sat for many minutes in silence. At length without a word, he took my hand, and we went down the hill together, by the light of the rising moon. We climbed the stile, passed under the garden boughs, and entered the cottage, and found the good old man seated in his library among his books. He raised his eyes as we came in, hand joined in hand, and a look of undisguised pleasure stole over his face.
"See here, father," said Ernest laughingly, "when I went to college, I left my little sister in your care. I now return, and discover that my little sister has disappeared, and left in her place this wild girl, whom I found wandering to-night among the hills. Don't you think there is something like a witch in her eyes?"
The old man smiled and laid his hand on my dark hair.
"Would to heaven!" he said, "that she might never leave this quiet home." And the prayer came from his heart.