"I shall have to; I never wish it, though."
"Then the awakening will not be pleasant?"
"No; I feel a presentiment that it will not. Oh, Emily! I am tired of my present stagnant life; and yet, sometimes I wish I might never be anything but a 'dreamer of dreams,' without even realizing how real life is. I wish I were now like you, my little Princess Frostina."
"You and I can never be alike—never, Georgia; every element in our nature is as essentially different as our looks. You are a blaze of red sky-rockets, and I am a little insignificant whiff of down."
"No indeed; you are a good, lovable girl, with a warm heart, a clear head, and a cool temper, who will lead a happy life, and die a happy death. But I—oh, Emily, Emily! what is to be my fate?"
She spoke with a sort of cry, and Emily started and gazed on her with a troubled, anxious face.
"Oh, Georgia, what is the matter? Dear Georgia! what is the matter? You look so dark, and strange, and troubled."
"I am out of spirits—a bad fit of the blues, Em," said Georgia, trying to smile. "I am a sort of monomaniac, I think; I do not know what is the matter with me. I wish I were away from here; I grow fairly wild at times. Emily, I shall die if I stay here much longer."
All that day something lay on her heart like lead. Perhaps it was the memory of that mysterious letter, and Charley's guilt, and his brother's anguish, that weighed it down. Miss Jerusha had long ago given up wondering at anything her eccentric protegee might see fit to do; but when all day long she saw her sit, dark and silent, with folded hands, at the window, gazing at the ever-restless, flowing river, she did wonder what strange thoughts were passing through her young heart, or, to use her own expression, what had "come to her." Fly gave it as her opinion, it was only a "new streak," in the already sufficiently "streaked" character of her young mistress. And Betsey Periwinkle, wondering too, but maintaining a discreet silence on the subject, came purring round her, while her more demonstrative offspring leaped into her lap and held up her head for her customary caress.
Unheeding them all, Georgia went early to her room, and leaning her head on her hand, gazed languidly out. The soft evening breeze lifted the damp, shining braids of her dark hair, and kissed softly her grave, beautiful face, and the evening star rose up in solemn beauty, and shone down into the dark eyes fixed so earnestly on the far-off horizon that seemed her prison wall. And Georgia looked up, and felt a holy calm steal into her heart, and forgot all her somber fancies, and her high heart-beating grew still in gazing on the trembling beauty of that solitary star.