“He would be telling me every day that we should be very good friends. He would be saying all day long that it was his desire fully to discharge his duty to me. I can hardly help shaking off his hand now, when he strokes my hair: and, if it came to his doing it every morning, we should certainly quarrel. They say Madame Critois never speaks; so I suppose she admires his conversation too much to interrupt it. There she and I should never agree.—Live at my guardian’s! Oh no!”
“You were thinking of some other house while I was describing your guardian’s, my dear. What were you thinking of? Where would you live?”
Euphrosyne plucked another twig, having pulled the first to pieces. She smiled again, blushed, and said she would tell her reverend mother very soon what home she was thinking of: she could not tell to-day; but in a little while—
“In the meantime,” said the abbess, with a scrutinising gaze,—“in the meantime, I conclude Father Gabriel knows all that is in your mind.”
“You will know in good time what I am thinking of, madam: everybody will know.”
The abbess was troubled.
“This is beginning early,” she said, as if thinking aloud; “this is beginning early with the mysteries and entanglements of life and the world! How wonderful it is to look on, to be a witness of these things for two or three successive generations! How every young creature thinks her case something wholly new—the emotions of her awakened heart something that God never before witnessed, and that man never conceived of! After all that has been written about love, upon the cavern walls of Hindoo temples, and in the hieroglyphics of old Egypt, and printed over all the mountains and valleys of the world by that deluge which was sent to quench unhallowed love, every young girl believes in her day that something unheard-of has happened when the dream has fallen upon her. My dear child, listen to one who knows more of life than you do—to one who would have you happy, not only in the next world, but in this.”
“Thank you, reverend mother.”
“Love is holy and blessed, my dear, when it comes in its due season—when it enters into a mind disciplined for new duties, and a heart waiting for new affections. In one who has no mother to help and comfort—”
“No mother, it is true,” said Euphrosyne.