"You are unsophisticated, Miss Ida. Your maxims are obsolete in the polity of the age."
"Because they are extracts from a changeless code. I am serious, Mr. Copeland. Your conscience assures you that you are in the wrong; that you have acted childishly—sinfully. That another debases God's gifts, is no reason why you should sully the fine gold of your heart. You have committed this outrage, or you could not talk of the sweetness of revenge."
"And I am serious, Miss Ida. Unjust, as you say I have been to myself, I have the manliness to recognise the superiority of a character—the antipodes of mine. I repeat, I regret my inability to serve you. Good evening."
"Are you going thus? What if we never meet again?"
"We part friends. Your reproaches, cutting as they were, have not diminished my esteem."
She could extort nothing more satisfactory. He would make no concessions—tender no pledges. Large tears gathered and dropped, as she beheld him mount and ride away; and other emotions than grief at her ill-success sent tributaries to the stream.
They prate senselessly who speak of forgotten loves or woes. As in neglected grave-yards, briars and weeds spring up, and delude the eye with the semblance of a smooth field, but when levelled to the roots, show the mounds they grow upon;—so above buried feelings, may wave memories and affections of later years—until some unforeseen event cuts, like a sickle-blade, through their ranks, and we see, with tears, as of fresh bereavement, the graves there still! Ida's was a brave spirit, but it trembled after the temptation was withdrawn. Richard had, unknowingly, been guilty of great cruelty in breaking the seal of her heart's closed chamber. Gingerly as he had handled its precious things, he had caused exquisite pain; and for hours and days, she felt that the door would not shut again. It was hard to smile—hard to concert plans for the future welfare of others, when before her, was blank darkness. But the whirling chaos was cleared and tranquillised in time; and even Emma was ignorant of the storm.
On the fifteenth of October, the heiress of Sunnybank would count her twenty-first birth day. The oldest negroes testified that it had been the custom in the Ross family, for an hundred years, to signalise such occasions with appropriate festivities; and Ida waived her wishes for a quiet visit from her friends; and tried to be as much interested in the proposed illumination and feast as if she were not the personage to be honoured. She worked more willingly when the Danas wrote that they were all coming, the Saturday before the fifteenth, which fell on Tuesday. Emma's scholars had a vacation of four weeks; and Laura Pinely was at the house most of her time. The two vied with each other in the number and elegance of the decorations of the premises.
"What upon earth!" exclaimed Ida, stumbling over a heap of green boughs in the back porch. Both girls screamed—"Oh! take care!" Ida sat down upon a bench, and untwisted a long streamer of running cedar from her ancle.