Just as she was taking this matter-of-fact view of the subject, the library-door opened, and in rushed Meta, looking wild and startled. Aunt Mary left us.
“Tell me, Enna,” she said, clinging to me, “have you heard any thing? I know you have, darling, for you will not look at me. Tell me all you have heard, for indeed it will be better for me. I cannot suffer more than I have these six months past;” and she sunk on the floor before me, overwhelmed with her anguish. She had heard the news from some morning visiters, and had escaped from home quietly, to come to me for comfort. The only consolation I could give, was sympathy. The whole day passed sadly enough, and I felt almost hopeless for her future, when suddenly a ray of light beamed upon me, as I heard her exclaim, “Well, thank Heaven! no one knows my miserable folly but you, Enna. I shall not be mortified and wounded by the insolent pity of society.” I saw that her pride was roused, and there is every hope for both man and woman so long as that remains. I took advantage of this, and lost no time in rousing her self-esteem. What an altered creature she seemed, pacing up and down my library a half hour afterward. I thought all the time of Queen Elizabeth’s reception of Leicester, in Kenilworth, after she had learned his perfidy to her and his poor wife, “Sweet Amy Robsart.” Meta queened it nobly over herself; and after the first struggle had passed, and the excitement of wounded pride even had passed, purer and better influences came to her aid and strengthened her. I had trembled, as I have said, for the effect of any great trouble or disappointment on Meta’s character, fearing the meet injurious consequences; this proved how I little I knew. The influence of trouble was beneficial to her, it served to quicken and strengthen her intellect; shook off the dreamy sentimentality that had hung like a mist over her fine mind, and she took a better, clearer view of life’s pursuits and duties.
A few years after this affair Meta married well and happily. Her husband is a distinguished man, and my friend leads the gay life of a woman of real society not in a little provincial circle, like that in which she had been brought up, and which had disgusted and wearied her by its silly, trifling vanities and nothings, but in stirring scenes of life, interesting herself in the grand and noble pursuits of her husband, who is a statesman and a scholar; receiving and entertaining the crowds of people who are attracted around her by her husband’s talents and her own brilliant, bewitching manners.
Our intimacy still continues; and whenever I read one of her sparkling letters, or pay her a visit, and see how healthily and heartily she enjoys life, I can scarcely conceive that she was ever the love-sick, romantic Meta Hallowell of former days; and I see with delight that she is now under the influence of the most beautiful, the most holy of all feelings—true, spiritual love; and that she retains only a smiling, pitying recollection of that season of her past life, when she had for awhile lingered in the depths of mortality, held down by the enervating influence of that hollow mockery—love for an unworthy object.
SONG.
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FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE WALTER HERRIES, ESQ.
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Would thou wert mine own wife,