“And I think you are just about as bad as John,” says the lady. “I don’t believe you listened to the sermon at all to-day.”
This last charge passes unanswered, because they have arrived at their own door, where we leave them.
II.
Two years after this, the cousins, Lizzie Lennox and Elinor Lloyd, have returned from their respective schools: Lizzie from her fashionable seminary, where she has received every advantage that money could purchase, and where she has associated with the daughters of the wealthiest, if not the most refined, families in the land. And if wealth will not purchase the means and open the way for refinement, pray what will? Does it not free the path from the thorns of toil, give time and means for culture and for travel, and to surround ourselves with the ennobling influences of art? And, above all, does it not grant us the free indulgence of generous impulses? Do not all the mortal ills of flesh which bear upon the rich bear also on the poor, with more added to stand in the way of their refinement? It would seem so.
Lizzie Lennox has all these advantages of wealth in her case, but her cousin Elinor Lloyd is the daughter of a poor man. Poorer now than he was two years ago, when he let his prudent wife have her way in the choice of a convent school for her daughter. Elinor has been very happy with the sisters, to whom she has become sincerely attached. Their good example has not been lost upon her, but she denies indignantly that any under-handed means have been used to warp her religious feelings. They have simply and honestly acted out the dictates of their own faith, exacting from her
only such general compliance as would be required in the schools of any denomination among Protestants. If her affections have been won, and her young heart drawn toward the religion of these gentle teachers, that was the risk her mother took when she sent her willingly among the Sisters of Charity.
The cousins are nearly of an age. Lizzie is named after her father’s sister, Mrs. Lloyd, and Elinor after her aunt, Mrs. Lennox.
These cousins are strikingly alike, and yet singularly unlike in their appearance. Their faces seem to have been cast in almost the same mould, so exactly does every feature correspond, but the coloring is so different that they present opposite types of beauty. For they are very beautiful. Lizzie is exceedingly fair, with light auburn hair and hazel eyes; the same reddish tint seeming to lurk in the eyes and lashes as in the hair, which peculiarity any close observer of faces may often see in this type. But Elinor’s eyes are a dark brown, and her hair is very dark. She is too fair and pale for a brunette, and her eyes are not black enough. Despite this difference in color, they are very like her cousin Lizzie’s light orbs in expression. It is as if a painter should take two sketches of the same face, and simply change his colors for the touching of them. Indeed, a cast of each might pass for the same person, so like are they, even to the carriage of the head, the turn of the throat, the curve of the shoulders. I am thus exact in my description, because out of this wonderful likeness and difference of face and form came Elinor’s trial. But now, at eighteen, Elinor’s face is softer and sweeter than that of her blonde cousin. This difference is seen as they are listening or talking, more than while their faces are in
repose. Shall we say that it is the result of training and education that Elinor seems the more refined and modest? Or is it only a matter of inheritance, or a trick of manner betokening nothing? I present them thus to the reader, who may guess somewhat of their respective characters, as they sit chatting their cousinly talk in Lizzie’s room. Lizzie is dressing to go out with Elinor, and talking while she proceeds with her toilet.
“But, Elly, where is the harm of flirting a little, so long as you do nothing serious, and never commit yourself?”