"The sea does look a little squally, I confess," replied her companion sarcastically.
"I own it does!"
"Well, as I am aboard of your ship it may be well for me to be looking out for breakers ahead. And yet I cannot understand how that 'love affair' of which you have told me could affect her now!"
"Well, I do! Without doubt she hopes to find him; but it does not matter what are her ambitions she is here much against my wishes and happiness!"
Happiness! Ah, where can the transgressor find peace or rest? "Who is wise shall understand these things; prudent and he shall know them, for the ways of the Lord are right and the just shall walk in them, but the transgressors shall fall therein."
Anna might have joined in the confusion and agitation of her friend had she caught a look as she desired from the keen, black eyes which had so troubled her in former days. But, strange as it may seem, those penetrating orbs failed to recognize in her whom they tried to avoid the sweet singer of "Cathesdra." The "nobody" whom her cousin persisted in raising out of her sphere had dropped from her mind. Neither had Anna ever met the daughter of Mrs. Belmont during her stay in the home of the St. Clair's, and could not, therefore, suspect that the meek, gentle nurse who had so won her heart was the one of whom she had so often heard. She had been told by Ellen of her brother's attachment and of their final separation, and he, only two mornings since, had substantiated her statement with the assurance that his imaginary love had been proved to himself to be only a fostered brotherly affection for his pretty cousin. They looked into each other's faces and smiled at the parting, little thinking how much of mystery was concealed from view.
"If one could only be seen in the light that falls upon them from the eternal brightness what a transfiguration it would work! There are estrangements and alienations," says some one, "that arise from ignorance of one another that divide families into almost as distinct and separate lives as rooms in the house they occupy."