They stood together hand in hand, silent and happy. Malina remained motionless, distant scarcely two paces, and yet they were so absorbed in the delirium of their own thoughts that her presence was unnoticed. My hand was still in hers, but the fingers which clasped mine grew cold as ice, and when I looked anxiously into her face again, the lips which had kissed me so often appeared hard and colorless; her forehead was contracted as if from physical suffering, and she seemed rooted to the stone, never to move again. A moment, and I felt that a shiver ran through her frame down to the cold fingers that grasped mine. She turned and moved away mechanically and noiseless as a shadow, leading me down the rocks and gradually tightening her grasp on my hand till I could scarcely forbear calling out from pain; but my childish heart ached so from the intuitive sense which taught me how dreadful were the feelings of my poor companion, that I could not complain. She moved forward hurriedly and with rapid footsteps, which made my earnest effort to keep up with her almost impossible. We left the rocks and crossing the highway plunged into the pine-woods; she did not take the footpath, but all unmindfully forced a passage through the undergrowth, crushing the rich winter-green with her impetuous tread. A humble ground bird started up from a tuft of brake leaves directly in her path, and took wing with a cry of terror. Still she hurried on unconscious, without heeding the bird who fluttered around us, uttering cry upon cry with a plaintive melody which made the tears start to my young eyes; but her racked heart was deaf even to that, and her foot passed so near the pretty nest which lay in its green lawn filled with speckled eggs, that a fox-glove which bent beneath her tread dipped its crimson cup into the nest, where it lay to perish on the broken stem. Still she hurried me on through the thickest undergrowth, and where the grove was cut up into knolls and grassy hollows which even my venturous footsteps had never searched before, all the time her cold hand tightened its grasp till my fingers were locked as in a vice, and the pain became insupportable.
“Oh don’t, Miss Malina, you walk so very fast and hurt my hand so it almost kills me!” I exclaimed at last, looking piteously up into her pale face. “Indeed, indeed, I can’t go any further, I am tired, see how the bushes have torn my new frock,” I added, sobbing as much from want of breath as from grief.
She stopped the moment I spoke, and looked at me as if surprised that I was her companion. Not even the piteous expression of my face, with the tears streaming down it, and the tattered state of my dress, which was indeed sadly torn, could arouse her to a consciousness of our position; for more than a minute she stood looking earnestly in my face, but perfectly unconscious of what she gazed upon.
“Oh, Miss Malina, don’t look at me in that way!” I said, burying my face in her dress and weeping still more bitterly. “Take me back to the falls, Miss Phebe and the minister will think we are lost.”
Malina dropped my hand as I spoke, and sunk to the grass, trembling all over and utterly strengthless; after a moment she lifted her head, looked wildly around as if to be certain that no eye witnessed her grief, and then she gave way to a passionate burst of sorrow, which to my young perception seemed like madness; she wrung her hands, shrouded her tearful face in the long curls which fell over it one moment, and flung them back with both hands damp and disheveled the next; her lips trembled with the broken and sorrowful words that rushed over them, words that had no connection but were full of that passionate eloquence which grief gives to the voice. At length she ceased to tremble and sat motionless, bending forward with her hands locked over her face and veiled by the drooping tresses of her hair. Now and then a sob broke through her fingers, while tears would trickle over them and fall, one after another, like drops of rain, over my dress, for I had crept into her lap and with my arms about her neck was striving in my childish way to comfort her.
“Don’t cry so,” I entreated, kissing her hands and exerting my infant skill to put back the curls which drooped in wet and glossy volumes over her face, “I love you very much.” She unclasped her hands, and drawing me closer to her bosom, looked with a mild and touching sorrow into my eyes.
“Nobody loves me,” murmured the poor, sobbing girl, shaking her head mournfully, “nobody loves me.”
I could only answer with childish expressions of endearment, which made her beautiful eyes brim with tears, and she wept on calmly and in silence, for the passion of her grief had exhausted itself. At length she placed me on the turf, and gathering up her hair, strove to arrange it, but the tresses were too abundant, and had become so disordered, that when she was compelled to grasp it in both her hands, and knot it back from her face beneath the cottage bonnet, the plain look which it gave to her forehead, the pallor of her face, with the dint and sorrowful expression of those eyes, almost transformed her. She was altogether unlike the gay and frolicsome girl who had helped me climb the rocks but one hour before. Alas! how few moments are required to change the destiny of a heart!
[To be continued.