On Miss Edgar's return to her room, as she opened the door, a flood of fragrance rolled upon her. She put up her hand in hasty gesture, as if to rebuke or resist it, while a shade of displeasure crossed her face. On the piano lay a bouquet of flowers, richest in hue and fragrance that garden or hot-house knows. All the season's splendor seemed concentrated within those narrow bounds.
The gas was already burning from a single jet, which she approached without observing the unusual fact, for the organist was accustomed in this room herself to control light and darkness.
One glance only was needed to convince her through what avenue this flowery gift had come.
Such gifts were offerings of more than common significance. Their renewal at this day seemed to disturb the organist as she turned the bouquet slowly in her hand and perceived how the old arrangement had been adhered to, from passion-flower to camellia, whitest white lily, and most delicate of roses; moss and vine-tendril, jessamine, heliotrope, violet, ivy: it was a work of Art consummating that of Nature, and complete.
With the bouquet in her hand, she went and sat down at the window. It was easy to see, by the changes of countenance, that she was fast assuming the reins of a resolution. Would the door of the organist of St. Peter's never open but to guests ethereal as these? The question was somehow asked, and she could not choose but hear it.
If he who sent the gift had pondered it, no less did she. And for result, at an early hour the next morning, the lady who had lived her life in sovereign independence and an almost absolute solitude, week after week these many months here in H——, was on her way to the studio of Adam von Gelhorn.
As to the lady, what image has the reader conjured up to fancy? Any vision? She was the shadow of a woman. Rachel, in her last days, not more ethereal. Two pale-faced, blue-eyed women could not be more dissimilar than the organist and her soprano. For the organist plainly was herself, with merely an abatement, that might have risen from anxiety, work, or study; whatever her disturbance, she made no exhibition of it; it was always a tranquil face, and no storms or wrecks were discoverable in those deep blue eyes. What those few faint lines on her countenance might mean she does not choose you shall interpret; therefore attempt it not. But when you look at Sybella, it is sorrow you see; and she says as plainly as if you heard her voice,—
"I have come to the great state where I expect nothing and am content."
Yet content! Is it content you read in her face, in her smile? Is it satisfaction that can gaze out thus upon the world?
It is sorrow rather,—and sorrow, with a questioning thereat, that seems prophetic of an answer that shall yet overthrow all the grim deductions, and restore the early imaginings, pure hopes, desires, and loving aims.