Duncan and his adopted sister had long known the nature of the tie which bound them members of one family, and they never called themselves brother and sister after the youth came home, a graduate from college. For, from the time when absence empowered him to look, as a stranger would on Rosalie, from that time he saw her elegant, and accomplished, and bewitching as she was, and other than fraternal affection was in his heart for her.
And Rosalie, too, loved him—just as Duncan, had he spoken his passion and his hope, would have prayed her to love him. She had long ago made him the standard of all manly excellence, and when he came back after three years of absence, she was not inclined to revoke her early decision—therefore was she prepared to read the language of Duncan’s eyes, and she consecrated her heart to him.
During the years which followed his return from college, till he was prepared for ordination as a priest, he did not once speak to her of his love, which was growing all the while stronger and deeper, as the river-course, that, flowing to the ocean, receives every day fresh impetus and force from the many tiny springs that commingle with it. Duncan Melville never thought of wedding with another than Rosalie Sherwood.
It was, as I said, near the time appointed for his ordination, when he felt for the first time, as though he had a right to speak openly with her of all his hopes. He asked her then, what in soul-language he had long before asked, a question which she had as emphatically, in like language, answered—to be the partner of his life for weal or for wo.
He had tried to calmly consider Rosalie’s character, as a Christian minister should consider the character of her whom he would make the sharer of his peculiar lot, and setting every preference aside, Duncan felt that she was fitted to assist and to bear, with him. She was truthful as the day, strong-minded and generous, humane and charitable, and though no professor of religion, a woman full of reverence and veneration. He knew that it was only a fear that she should not adorn the Christian name that kept her back from the altar of the church, and he loved her for that spirit of humility, knowing that she was “on the Lord’s side,” and that grace ere long would be given her to proclaim it in the doing all His commandments.
It was certainly with a joyful and confident heart, after he had spoken with Rosalie, that Duncan sought his mother yesterday, to speak with her of the whole of that bright future which opened now before him.
How then was he overcome with surprise and grief, when Mrs. Melville told him that it was a union to which she could never consent! Then, for the first time in his life, the astonished young man heard of that stain which was on the name poor Rosalie bore. He heard the story to an end, and then with a decision and energy that would have settled the matter with almost any other person, he declared:
“Yet, mother—I will not give her up.”
“It could not be expected that you would fulfill the engagement; Rosalie herself would not allow it, if she knew the truth of the matter.”
“But she need not know it—there is no existing necessity. Is it not enough that she is good and precious to me? She is a noble woman, whose life has been, thanks to your guidance, beautiful and lofty.”