“I love him,” replied Ada, emphatically.
“Maidens seldom avow their preferences so very boldly,” said Lady Hartleton, with a smile.
“They who have felt as I have felt,” said Ada, “the pangs of solitude and the horrors of a persecution, surely never paralleled, would learn to set a high value on the heart that loved them in their misery, and to cherish as something holy, the words of comfort, hope, and kindness, that were breathed to them in their despair. You wonder that I can avow without a blush my heart’s fond love for Albert Seyton. Oh, lady, it has been the only light that shone upon me through years of gloom. Can you wonder, then, that I thought it beautiful—I am as one who had been confined for many, many years, in a dungeon. I read the legend in a book that Albert lent to me. For many years, then, this poor fated being had not seen the light of day—had heard nothing but the harsh grating of his dungeon door—the hideous rattle of his chains, until at last one day there came struggling like a sunbeam upon his soul, a strain of music. ’Twas a common air, and played unskilfully, but to him it was indeed divine.”
“The prisoner lived to bid adieu to his dungeon, and he came abroad into the great world. He heard music in its excellence—music that seemed borrowed from Heaven, and he praised; admired; applauded it. But one day, some wandering minstrel, with a careless hand, struck up from a rude viol the strain that in his dungeon had so sweetly greeted him. Oh, how his heart bounded, like a bird, within his breast—how a joy unequalled danced through his brain. He wept, he sobbed aloud in his happiness. What music greeted his rapt senses like that! He hung upon the minstrel’s neck, and his prayer was—‘Oh, stay ever near me, and when I am sad or weary, play to me that strain that I may thank God for my happiness.’”
Ada ceased speaking, and Lady Hartleton caught her to her heart, as she said,—
“My dear Ada, I did but speak for the pleasure of hearing you reply to me. I am too richly repaid.”
“As that lonely prisoner loved the strain of melody that greeted his dreary solitude,” sobbed Ada, “so let me love him who sought me out when I had none else to love me, and told me how to hope.”
“Your pure and noble feelings, Ada,” said Lady Hartleton, much affected, “do you infinite honour. I am proud of you, my dear Ada, and hope to have the second place in your heart.”
“You have the first,” said Ada. “I cannot make distinctions between those I love. I open my heart freely to you. There is room, dear lady, for you and Albert both, and for Sir Francis too.”
There was a beautiful and earnest simplicity in Ada’s manner that perfectly charmed Lady Hartleton, and she encouraged her to open her heart thoroughly to her; and she was perfectly astonished at the rich store of poetry, beauty, and virtue which lay garnered up in the breast of the persecuted and beautiful girl—stores of feeling, thought, and imagination which required but the sunny influence of kindness to bring forth in all their native purity and beauty.