"I think Aunt Enna is going with us, and you will be left quite alone, unless you will let me stay, or send a servant to sit with you," Elsie suggested.
But Molly insisted that she would rather be alone. "And you know," she added, pointing to a silver hand bell on the table before her, "I can ring if I need anything."
So Elsie went rather sadly away, more than half suspecting that Molly was grieving over her inability to move about as others did, and take part in the active sports they found so enjoyable and healthful.
And indeed she had hardly closed the door between them when the tears began to roll down Molly's cheeks. She wiped them away and tried to go on with her work; but they came faster and faster, till throwing down her pen she hid her face in her hands, and burst into passionate weeping, sobs shaking her whole frame.
A longing so intense had come over her to leave that chair, to walk, to run, to leap and dance, as she had delighted to do in the old days before that terrible fall. She wanted to wander over the velvety lawn beneath her windows, to pluck for herself the many-hued, sweet-scented flowers, growing here and there in the grass. Kind hands were always ready to gather and bring them to her, but it was not like walking about among them, stooping down and plucking them with her own fingers.
Oh to feel her feet under her and wander at her own sweet will about the beautiful grounds, over the hills and through the woods! Oh to feel that she was a fit mate for some one who might some day love and cherish her as Mr. Travilla had loved and cherished her whom he so fondly called his "little wife!"
She pitied her cousin for her sad bereavement; her heart had often, often bled for her because of her loss; but ah! it were "better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."
Never to love, never to be loved, that was the hardest part of it all.
There was Dick, to be sure, the dear fellow! how she did love him! and she believed he loved her almost as well; but the time would come when another would have the first place in his heart; perhaps it had already come.
Her mother's affection was something, but it was the love of a stronger nature than her own that she craved, a staff to lean upon, a guiding, protecting love, a support such as is the strong, stately oak to the delicate, clinging vine.