When the daughter, Sabrina, grew up to sixteen, her beauty, the character she developed, and her general conduct were the topic of quite as much rural conversation and remark as had been the mystery that hung around the mother. Gradually drawn out into the neighboring society, her great personal attractions, added to her shrewdness and good sense, made her so much admired as to collect around her a train of suitors, who seemed to consider her being fatherless as of no more consequence to them than it was to herself.
But there was in her temperament an undercurrent of ambition so strong as to cause her to receive their advances toward tender acquaintance with a freezing coldness, while at the same time it rendered her positively unhappy. She felt superior to her condition, and she longed to rise above it. Her mind had attained to a premature development while feeding almost exclusively on its own thoughts,—for she had never been fond of books, though there were many around her. Her sole occupations had been the school, the needle, and assisting her mother in the management of their flower-garden. For this last she had a decided taste, and they had concealed the time-worn character of the old house they occupied by covering it with a luxuriance of floral wealth, so tastefully arranged, and so profuse and gorgeous, that travellers on the dusty highway on which it stood would stop to admire the remarkable blending of the climbing rose, the honeysuckle, and the grape.
Thus filled with indefinite longings, she grew up to womanhood without any proper direction from her mother. She had no sympathy with her uncultivated suitors. She sighed for something higher, an ideal that was far off, indistinct, and dim. Good offers of marriage from neighboring workmen of fair character and prospects she stubbornly declined, sometimes with a tartness that quite confounded the swain whom her well-known character had half-intimidated before he ventured on the dangerous proposal. Love had not yet unsealed the deep fountain of her singularly constituted heart. But I suppose that there must somewhere be a key to every woman's affections, and that it is generally found in but few hands,—sometimes in safe ones, sometimes in very dangerous ones. It was so with Sabrina.
One evening, at a party, she became acquainted with a young sprig of the medical profession, who was captivated by her beauty. The fellow was loquacious, prepossessing, and bold, with an air of high life and fashion about him to which Sabrina had not been accustomed. But though unsteady, insincere, and wholly unworthy of her, yet the glitter of his style and manner won her heart, and an engagement of marriage took place between them, which he, for some unexplained reason, required of her to keep secret. She was young and inexperienced, and so happy in her prospects as to give but little thought to the obligation to concealment. A future was opening to her such as she had longed for; her ambitious aspirations for a higher destiny were about to be realized.
Somehow the neighborhood became possessed of her secret,—not, however, from her, but by that intuition which reveals to lookers-on the sure finale of an intimacy such as every one saw had grown up between her and the young physician. Her future was said to be a brilliant one; she was to be rich, and a great lady. There were absurd and wide-spread exaggerations of an almost every-day occurrence. Some sneered while they repeated them, as if envious of her elevation, while others went so far as to suggest surmises unworthy of her virtue. But Sabrina heard nothing of what the little world around her said or thought. Happy in her own heart, she was unconcerned as to all beyond.
Months passed away, when all at once her lover ceased his visits. This, too, was immediately observed by all the gossips of the neighborhood. It was said that she had been cruelly deceived, even ruined. But she no more than others was able to account for this unexpected abandonment. The truth eventually came out, however. The father of her lover had heard the common rumor, that his son was about marrying an obscure and fatherless girl, questioned him, and warned him of the consequences. It was the first serious intimation the young man had received that his secret was known, and he resolved to cast off the poor girl, seeking to pacify the reproaches of his conscience by accusing her of having divulged it. There was not a manly impulse in his bosom; he gave her no opportunity for explanation, but forsook her on the instant.
For a time the victim of this faithlessness sunk under the weight of her disappointment. To her proud spirit the mortification was almost beyond endurance. And if Divine Providence had not mercifully given to us, to woman especially, strength according to our day, tempering the wind to the shorn lamb, the world would be peopled with perpetual mourners. But there is
"No grief so great but runneth to an end;
No hap so hard but will in time amend."
She bore up bravely, and in time her strong mind recovered in a good degree its equilibrium. But she was now a subdued and thoughtful woman. Four years passed away, during which her former admirers gradually gathered around her again, solicitous, as before, to win her favor. To one of them she gave her hand,—her heart was yet another's. Years of an unhappy married life went over her, brightening no cloud above her head, admitting no sunshine into her heart. All her ambitious aspirations had been blasted, all her early hopes wrecked. Marriage had proved no blessing to a mind so ill-regulated. Her mother died, and then her husband. The secret source from which the mother had been supplied with means was unknown to the daughter, and she had still pride enough to refrain from all endeavor to solve the mystery. No one was able to do so during the lifetime of the former,—who was there to do it after her death?
Thus thrown upon herself when only twenty-six years of age, she went to work; and when we came to the factory, we found her there, the most industrious and skilful of all the operators. Employment gave a new turn to her thoughts. New associations opened other and more hopeful views to her mind. She became cheerful, sometimes animated, and, with my sister, intimate and confiding.