By this time Belle had noticed that she had an unappreciative audience, and was closing the piano, contriving to display, as she did so, a certain amount of well-bred annoyance, as I knew instinctively without looking at her, so well was I used to her little ways. Lady Elizabeth smiled pleasantly and said, “Thank you, my dear.” My father, considerably to Belle’s own wonderment, appeared quite oblivious of her beautiful presence, a thing she had never had to complain of before. He looked like a man suddenly confronted with a new and mysterious riddle, and as if he were not sure whether he ought not to doubt the sanity of any one who could deliberately say anything in favor of me. True, old Martha and her husband were sometimes quite ungrudging of their commendation, after I had been specially useful to them. But they were only servants, and it was perhaps natural that they should judge things in a different way to more educated people.
As for me, I sat like one in ecstasy, for I had at last found some one who was not only willing, but actually determined to see that I was treated in a manner equal to the other daughter of the house, and not relegated to the position of a menial. My father had evidently forgotten that I was in the room. Lady Elizabeth thought I had left it, as was evidenced by her parting words to Belle, as the latter was going up to her own bedroom.
“Good-night, Belle,” she said. “To-morrow we will have a talk about what we will do together in future, eh? And tell your sister that I hope she will be well enough to go on an exploring expedition with me. I’m sure she has a pretty garden and other interesting things of her own to show me. She looks like a real lover of nature.”
Had my heart not been so full of conflicting emotion I could have laughed at Belle’s stare of surprise. But laughter would have been horrible to me just then, and would have seemed a desecration of the purer sounds that rose to my lips.
Does the reader know how it feels to be in a state of joy so exquisite that it is difficult to restrain the voice from shrieking aloud and the limbs from dancing in wild abandonment? Even so did I feel when I rose from my chair as Belle left the room. But my excitement ran into the channels of gratitude and love, and I soon found myself kneeling at Lady Elizabeth’s feet, sobs shaking my frame, tears streaming down my cheeks, and broken words of feeling issuing from my lips.
“Dear, dear lady!” I cried. “Oh, how I bless you for your kind words! You don’t know how I have hungered for love! You don’t know what a grief it was to me to seem rude to you. You don’t know how grateful I can be. I will do anything for you. I will work my fingers to the bone, if you wish it. I will lay my life down for you, if you will only give me just a little corner of your heart, just a little of the sympathy for which my heart has been aching.”
“My dear child,” said my stepmother, as she clasped me warmly to her breast, while genuine tears of sympathy actually rolled down her cheeks. “My poor Dora! of course I mean to love you. And I want you to remember that I am your mother, to whom you must come in all your troubles.”
Then, with an affectionate kiss, she released me, and I fled to my bedroom, sobbing still with excitement, but proud, happy and exultant, as I had never been in my life.
“She is an angel!” I thought, rapturously. “Oh! how happy we shall be now!”
Alas, poor mortal! it is well for thee that the portals of the future are impervious to thy gaze, and that it is forbidden thee to know how small is perhaps thy destined share of happiness, the true elixir of life.