"Don't lose all faith, Alice; there are true hearts in the world. Perhaps this lover of yours, now, has repented and is striving to find you. Or you may have been misinformed as to the extent of his treachery. To take your own simile, you don't accuse the brook of fickleness merely because it eddies around under some flowery bank; after it has made the circle, it keeps on its steady course."
Alice only shook her head, still keeping her face averted to conceal the tremor of her lips.
"But you haven't told me who this man is. How odd it would be, if I knew him!"
"I would rather not have you know. The secret isn't a fatal one, to be sure; but I prefer to keep it."
Suddenly she stepped back from the window, ashy pale, and gasping hysterically. Mrs. Sandford rose hastily to assist her, and, as she did so, noticed her old acquaintance, Mr. Greenleaf, on the opposite sidewalk. She helped Alice to her seat and brought her a glass of water, and, as she did so, in an instant the long track of the past was illumined as by a flash of lightning. She saw the reason for Greenleaf's conduct towards her sister-in-law, Marcia. She remembered his early fascination, his long, vacillating resistance, his brief engagement, and the stormy scene when it was broken. She had seen the thread of Fate spun for each, without knowing that invisible strands connected them. She had begun to read a tale of sorrow, but the page was torn, and now she had finished it upon the chance-found fragment; the irregular and jagged edges fitted together like mosaic-work.
What a mystery is Truth! A Lie may simulate its form or hue, and, taken by itself, may deceive the most acute observer. But in the affairs of the world, every fact is related; it meets and is joined by other facts on every side,—the whole forming an harmonious figure in all its angles and curves as well as in its gradations of color. Each truth slips easily into its predestined place; a lie, however trivial, has no place; its angles are belligerent, its colors false; it makes confusion, and is thrown out as soon as the eye of the Master falls upon it.
Alice revived.
"Did I speak?" she asked.
"No,—you said nothing."
"I am glad. I feared I had been foolish. It was a mere passing faintness."