"That poor girl!" said Juliet, and a shudder ran through her frame. "How can I forget her? Her pale face—her sunken eyes—her look of unutterable woe. Oh, she haunts me continually; and I—I—may have been the cause of all this misery. My head aches sadly. I will go to bed. I long to be alone."
She embraced her father, and bade him good night, and curtseying to aunt Dorothy, for her heart was too sore to speak to her, she sought the silence and solitude of her own chamber.
Oh, what luxury it was to be alone—to know that no prying eyes looked upon her grief; no harsh voice, with unfeeling common-place, tore open the deep wounds of her aching heart, and made them bleed afresh!
"Oh, that I could think him innocent!" she said. "Yet I cannot wholly consider him guilty. He looked—oh, how sad and touching was that look! It spoke of sorrow, but it revealed no trait of remorse; but then, would Mary, by her strange conduct, have condemned a man whom she knew to be innocent? Alas! it must be so, and 'tis a crime to love him."
She sank upon her knees, and buried her face in the coverlid of the bed, but no prayer rose to her lips—an utter prostration of soul was there, but the shrine of her God was dark and voiceless; the waves of human passion had flowed over it, and marred the purity of the accustomed offering. Hour after hour still found her on her knees, yet she could not form a single petition to the Divine Father. As Southey has beautifully expressed the same feelings in the finest of all his poems:
| "An agony of tears was all her soul could offer." |
Midnight came; the moon had climbed high in the heavens. The family had retired for the night, and deep silence reigned through the house, when Juliet rose from her knees, and approaching the open casement, looked long and sadly into the serene, tranquil depths of the cloudless night.
Who ever gazed upon the face of the divine mother in vain? The spirit of peace brooded over the slumbering world—that holy calm which no passion of man can disturb—which falls with the same profound stillness round the turmoil of the battle-field, and the bed of death—which enfolds in its silent embrace the eternity of the past—the wide ocean of the present. How many streaming eyes had been raised to that cloudless moon!—how many hands had been lifted up in heart-felt prayer to those solemn star-gemmed heavens! What tales of bitter grief had been poured out to the majesty of night! The eyes were quenched in the darkness of the grave; the hands were dust; and the impassioned hearts that once breathed those plaintive notes of woe, where, oh where were they? The spirit that listened to the sorrows of their day had no revelation to make of their fate!
"And I, what am I, that I should repine and murmur against the decrees of Providence?" sighed Juliet. "The sorrows that I now endure have been felt by thousands who now feel no more. God, give me patience under every trial. In humble faith teach me resignation to Thy divine will."
With a sorrowful tranquillity of mind she turned from the window, struck a light, and prepared to undress, when her attention was arrested by a letter lying upon her dressing table. She instantly recognised the hand, and hastily breaking the seal, read with no small emotion the following lines