Janet felt much as Cinderella may be supposed to have done when her fairy godmother converted her ragged attire into a splendid gala-dress. Life in a moment seemed changed to her view; all misanthropic fancies, all gloomy forebodings took flight; she was ready to exclaim, in the words of the song,
"This world is a beautiful world after all!"
Away with all feelings of jealous longing to share the advantages of other women! With whom would she now change? Had she not, misshapen and unlovely as she was, achieved the conquest of one who had long appeared, in her eyes, as the most perfect of human beings? How often had she fondly wished to possess the beautiful features and graceful form of Philippa, and yet Philippa had merely won the homage of gay, fashionable triflers, while she had received a declaration of affection from one so dear to her, that if she had been endowed with the most brilliant loveliness, and the most lavish wealth, she would have wished, like Portia, to be for his sake
"A thousand times more fair—ten thousand times more rich!"
These raptures may appear to our readers rather beyond what can be justified by the receipt of a valentine; but be it remembered that it was not in the style of a common valentine, that Heathcote was not a common character, and that poor Janet had never received even the slightest token of admiration before that eventful fourteenth of February. Martin Farquhar Tupper says, in his "Proverbial Philosophy,"
"It is a holy thirst to long for Love's requital;
Hard it will be, hard and sad, to love and be unloved;
And many a thorn is thrust into the side of one that is forgotten."
If such, then, be the suffering of the neglected, what must be the delight of feeling the long-borne load suddenly removed from the heart!
Janet, after enjoying her newly-found happiness in solitude for some time, sought her friend Philippa, who kindly congratulated her on her acquisition, and reminded her how often she had told her that she greatly exaggerated the neglect and unkindness of the world; but Philippa would not be persuaded into thinking that a valentine was at all equivalent to a promise of marriage, or even to a declaration of love.