Correliana, while reading her father’s script welcome, watched with keen interest its effect, and was recompensed to an extent exceeding her expectations, by the warmth made manifest from the grateful emotions of the respondent. Fully satisfied with his relief from the sensitive reproaches of his disposition, for thoughtful diversion from his waiting suspense, she appealed to the Doschessa for encouragement in behalf of her meditated mission for the colonistic establishment of schools for the educational intuition of self-legislation, among the civilized Giga races. “Have you, in your auramental experience, which enables you to reach and advise the thoughts of Giga women, found them all so abjectly subservient to the trammels of society and its fashionable tyrannies?”
Doschessa. “The exceptions are simply modified, all worship at the same shrine of thoughtless fatuity, with a heedless tendency for the utter extinction of purity and goodness.”
Correliana. “Alieu, woe is with our hopes, if to such a depth of desecration the animus of purity has befallen with our sex! Surely, she must still retain the germ of her affectionate inheritance; and with the lead of our example it must revive with the nourishing warmth of a mother’s love.”
Doschessa. “In truth, we have never failed to discover in women, when free from the actual vices of corruption, the latent spark of goodness that with exampled cultivation may be revived for truthful reciprocation. Dependent as we have been upon auramentation for the invocation of purity in thought, the impressions are as transient as the conjurations of a dream, which give place to the more tangible waking visions of sense. If the current of their superficial conversation could be stayed, for the silent inception of thought, your mission would be rendered easy. Perhaps the irresistible impression of your own and companion’s beauty, will surprise from envious covetousness sufficient thought for the detection of an inceptive source, with the desire for its privileged bequeathment to their children? For often in selfish lamentation we have heard Giga women supplicate in prayer for the abatement of their own scandalous dispositions. One of their formulistic invocations to the ‘throne of grace,’ offered as an oblation for the “contrite heart,” I will repeat:—
“‘Purge from me hypocrisy, ere I from life depart,
And all deceptions, that belong to the lying art.
Then purify love, from thoughts of material sense,
And make me feel that goodness responds to future tense.’”
This accusative conviction is by no means rare, and the purity of your personal appearance, in consonance with exampled goodness, might attract thoughtful consideration from its contrast to the degrading attrition of selfishness subject to the material influence of gold. Your example might lead them in train to adopt our dress, which is light and ‘elegant,’ subserving all the requirements of bodily freedom, and purity in protection; if so fortunate you would remove the embargo of oppression from their bodies, and the curse of talkative frivolity from their tongues.”
Here the Doschessa was interrupted by the sound of light footsteps, quickly followed by the voices and presence of Cleorita and Oviata, who with an escort of Kyronese maidens came bounding into the triclinium with the joyful announcement, “He’s coming!” Pale and breathless, Correliana, without waiting for farther words of explanation, sped forth, her feet with dainty touch kissing the earth with gladness, passing with the swiftness of an arrow in its flight those already hastening down the avenue of the latifundium, apprised of the near approach of Captain Greenwood. First, she passed Mr. Welson and Dr. Baāhar, then with graceful ease Mr. Dow, whose lank form and longer strides had distanced his associates; even the mayorong, inured to an active mountain life, and long journeys on foot, now fledged with the grateful remembrance of his people’s preservation, was left behind. Then as Captain Greenwood, urging his mule to its utmost speed, caught her view as he entered the cinctus gate, the earth seemed to respond with elasticity to the touch of her feet, and before he could dismount from his quadrupedal conveyance, he was clasped in the frank embrace of her arms, and had received her kiss of welcome, while her face, eloquent with smiles and tears of joy, became radiant with beauty in contentful expression. Her hushed silence, from the fullness of happy enjoyment, was aroused from selfish indulgence, by the salutation of her father to his already adopted step-son. Still in half embrace, as if loth to relinquish the body temple animated with the shrine of her devotion, she was not forgetful of the affectionate relation she held foreign to self. Her parents and sister, who had followed with equal steps, but had held anxious desire aloof, until the fullness of her first emotions of gladness had subsided, were first made known to each other with affectionate designations, newly fledged from the English idiom. In turn the captain received embraces of welcome from each, which unloosed his tongue from its accustomed reticent caution, Correliana’s still encircling arm causing the grateful current of speech to flow in accord with her own emotions.