"Come, rouse thee, dearest; 'tis not well
To let the spirit brood
Thus darkly o'er the cares that swell
Life's current to a flood."
—Mrs. Dinnies.
"And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
'Tis that I may not weep; and if I weep,
'Tis that our nature cannot always bring
Itself to apathy, which we must steep
First in the icy depths of Lethe's spring
Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep."
—Byron.
"Lulu, I have come to take you for a drive," said Grace Winans, as she glided lightly into Miss Clendenon's sanctum, looking fair and fresh, and smiling, in faultless summer costume of frilled and fluted white muslin, and the daintiest of gray kid driving-gloves, for it is six months since Captain Clendenon went to Europe, and the last days of August are raining their burning sunshine on the sea-girt city of Norfolk.
But Lulu's room, cool, fresh, inviting, a very bower of innocent maidenhood—offers an exquisite relief from the burning heat and general parched look of the world outside. A cool, white India matting covers the floor; the chairs are light graceful affairs of willow-work; the windows are shaded with curtains of pale green silk and lace, swaying softly in the faint breeze that stirs the trees outside. A few rare paintings adorn the creamy-hued walls—pictures of cool woodland dells and streams, with meek-eyed cows standing knee-deep in meadow grass; a charmingly romantic sketch of the Chesapeake Bay, and over the white, dainty-covered lounge, where Lulu is reclining at ease, a picture of a cross, to which a slender form, with a vail of sweeping hair, clings with dark, uplifted eyes that breathe the spirit of the inscription beneath: "Helpless to thy cross I cling." A vase of fragrant and beautifully arranged flowers adorns the marble center-table where the poems of Tennyson, Hemans, Owen Meredith, and all the authors, peculiarly the favorites of young ladies, are ranged in bindings of green and gold. Lulu, herself, lying idly with white arms clasped over her head, her face like a rose, her dainty white morning-dress loosely flowing, "a single stream of all her soft brown hair poured on one side," looked as if Rose, the "Gardener's Daughter" had stepped down out of Tennyson and laid herself down to rest.
"To drive—where?" she asked, as she rose to a sitting posture, and "wound her looser hair in braid."
"To Ocean View, to call on Mrs. Conway. My neglect of her since her great kindness to me in my illness is really unpardonable, so we will drive down this morning, make a long, informal call, stay to luncheon, and drive back in the cool of the afternoon."
"Hum! is not nine miles a long distance to drive this warm day?" asks Lulu, rising and flitting into her dressing-room, the door of which stands open beyond.
"What! Through the cool leafy arches of the woods, with the birds singing, the bees humming, the flowers wasting their perfume for our sole benefit, the spirit of summer abroad in the air—it will be exquisite!" Mrs. Winans answers gayly, as she floats up and down the room, and, pausing before a mirror, settles her broad straw hat a little more jauntily on her waving ringlets.