Well, when his house was all complete, uncle Waldron proposed to Sara to assume the responsibilities of its mistress, and threatened, in a way she quite understood, to “cut her off with a shilling,” in case she declined, so she followed her own inclination, and very readily assented.
Cousin Sara was a star of the first magnitude in one of the most elegant and policed literary constellations in her native city. Faultlessly lovely in person, in manners, and in mind, her heart over-flowing with the freshest and most cheerful piety, woman’s brightest ornament, it was a mystery to us all, how she happened to live till she was twenty-seven years old, without taking those responsibilities which most of our sex, without a tithe of her attractions or her abilities, assume, long enough before they have the maturity and richness of twenty-seven invaluable years in their favor—especially strange we thought it, when so many most enviable inducements had been urged upon her acceptance. But nobody seemed to please our fastidious cousin Sara.
When she had been some months at uncle Waldron’s, it became very evident to us, quizzical spies of cousins, who took great pleasure in spending a few weeks with her now and then, that she was more interested in the society and person of the Rev. Robert Greydon, than she was really willing we should discover. She hushed our impertinence in a moment, if we undertook to rally her on the subject, by a peculiarly imploring expression of countenance, which only made us think so all the more. Mr. Greydon, as has been already intimated, was the clergyman of the church where uncle Waldron worshiped. Cousin Sara had often declared that she would not marry a clergyman or a widower. Mr. Greydon, though still a young man, united in his person both those disqualifications, so we managed, in the face of all indications to the contrary, to conclude that we had nothing to fear. If he had not been a widower and clergyman, we should have chosen him, out of all the world, for Sara’s husband—for he possessed all those rare and invaluable excellencies of character, which Sara deserved, if ever a lovely woman did, in the man of her choice.
Mr. Greydon was a very prudent man in his pastoral and social intercourse. He did not wish to give the “silly women” of his parish, who, as in duty bound, would keep a very faithful look-out after him, any occasion to tattle—but the arrangement of the German lessons was just the thing—it afforded him the most unimpeachable excuse for enjoying Sara’s society without sounding an alarum in any body’s ears.
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CHAPTER III.
“I would not light the lamp yet, Miss Hastings—this moonlight is so magical,” said Mr. Greydon, as he sat in the bay window of uncle’s drawing-room, one glorious evening in early summer. Indeed it was as lovely an evening, and as fair a scene, as pencil of artist ever aspired to sketch. I was sitting on the broad piazza, trying what my tyro pencil could do with a landscape so wonderfully beautiful.
“You are sad, to-night, Mr. Greydon,” said Sara, desisting from her purpose, and taking a chair by the table that had been drawn near the window.
“No—not sad exactly, Miss Hastings—only of a doubtful mind,” replied Mr. Greydon.
“Indeed!” gayly responded Sara—“but that must not be—it is expressly forbidden in Scripture and—”