Helen, (looking down, and hesitatingly.)—“Indeed there is nothing to tell you that you do not know; and it is so long since, and things are so changed now.”
The tone of the last words was mournful, and the words ended with a sigh.
Violante, (with enthusiasm.)—“How I envy you that past which you treat so lightly! To have been something, even in childhood, to the formation of a noble nature; to have borne on those slight shoulders half the load of a man’s grand labour. And now to see Genius moving calm in its clear career; and to say inly, ‘Of that genius I am a part!’”
“Helen, (sadly and humbly.)—“A part! Oh, no! A part? I don’t understand you.”
Violante.—“Take the child Beatrice from Dante’s life, and should we have a Dante? What is a poet’s genius but the voice of its emotions? All things in life and in Nature influence genius; but what influences it the most, are its sorrows and affections.”
Helen looks softly into Violante’s eloquent face, and draws nearer to her in tender silence.
Violante, (suddenly.)—“Yes, Helen, yes—I know by my own heart how to read yours. Such memories are ineffaceable. Few guess what strange self-weavers of our own destinies we women are in our veriest childhood!” She sunk her voice into a whisper: “How could Leonard fail to be dear to you—dear as you to him—dearer than all others?”
Helen, (shrinking back, and greatly disturbed.)—“Hush, hush! you must not speak to me thus; it is wicked—I cannot bear it. I would not have it be so—it must not be—it cannot!”
She clasped her hands over her eyes for a moment, and then lifted her face, and the face was very sad, but very calm.
Violante, (twining her arm round Helen’s waist.)—“How have I wounded you?—how offended? Forgive me—but why is this wicked? Why must it not be? Is it because he is below you in birth?”