"Miss Alice, I have trespassed too long already upon your brother's hospitality; beside, Miss Alice, I begin to feel that his welcome is worn out. Your brother, for some days, has seemed less cordial than was his wont during the first weeks of my stay here."
"My brother, sir, is a strange being—a creature of whims and caprices. There is nothing fixed or settled in his opinions or conduct. His inviting you to spend the summer with us was a whim: one that has astonished several who have not hesitated to express it. It is as likely on his return from his river place, that he will devour you with kindness as that he will meet you with the coldness he has manifested for some days. Do not let your conduct be influenced by his whims."
"Miss Alice, I am suspicious, perhaps, by nature. I have thought that you have avoided me lately. I have been very lonesome at times."
Alice lifted her bonnet from her head, and was swinging it by the strings as she walked along for a few steps, when she stopped, and, turning to her companion, said with a firm though timid voice: "I cannot be deceitful. You have properly guessed: I have avoided you. It was on your account as well as my own. My self-respect is in conflict with my respect for you. I need not tell you why I avoided you; but I will—conscious that I am speaking to a gentleman who will appreciate my motives and preserve inviolate my communications. You saw my cousin hurry away from here. She came to remain some weeks. The cause of her going was my brother. From some strange, unaccountable cause he became offended with her, and charged her with giving bad advice to me. What she has said to me as advice since she came was in the privacy of my bedroom, and in such tones that had he or another been in the chamber they could not have overheard it. I know, sir, and in shame do I speak it, that I am under the surveillance of the servants, who report to my brother and my sister my every act and every word; and I know, too, my brother's imagination supplies in many instances these reports. Why I am thus watched I know not.
"My brother is my guardian, and nature and duty, it would seem, should prompt him to guard my happiness as well as my interest; but I know in the one instance he fails, and I fear in the other I am suffering. All my family fear him, and none of them love me. I am my parents' youngest child. Oh, sir! England is not the only country where it is a curse to be a younger child. My father died when I was an infant. My mother was affectionate and indulgent; my sisters were harsh and tyrannical, and in very early girlhood taught me to hate them. My mother was made miserable by their treatment of me; and my brother, too, quarrelled with her because she would not subject me to the servility of the discipline he prescribed. This quarrel ripened into hate, and he never came to the house or spoke to my mother for years.
"The day before she died, and when her recovery was thought to be impossible, he came with a prepared will and witnesses, which in their presence he almost forced her to sign: in this will I was greatly wronged, and this brother has tauntingly told me the cause of this was my being the means of prejudicing our mother against him.
"He married a coarse, vulgar Kentucky woman, and brought her into the house. She was insolent and disrespectful toward my mother, and I resented it. She left the house, and died a few months after. Since that day, though I was almost a child, my life has been one of constant persecution on the part of my brother and sisters. I am compelled to endure it, but do so under protest; if not in words, I do in manner, and this I am persuaded you have on more than one occasion observed. Please do not consider me impertinent, nor let it influence you in your opinion of me, when I tell you my brother has rudely said to me that I was too forward in my intercourse with you. It is humiliating to say this to you; but I must, for it explains my conduct, which save in this regard has been motiveless.
"A lady born to the inheritance of fortune is very unpleasantly situated, both toward her family and to the world. These seem solicitous to take greater interest in her pecuniary affairs than in her personal happiness, and are always careful to warn her that her money is more sought than herself—distracting her mind and feelings, and keeping her constantly miserable. Since my school-days I have been companionless. If I have gone into society, I have been under the guard of one or the other of my sisters. These are cold, austere, and repulsive, and especially toward those who would most likely seek my society, and with whom I would most naturally be pleased. I must be retired, cold, and never to seem pleased, but always remarkably silent and dignified. I must be a goddess to be worshipped, and not an equal to be approached and my society courted companionably. In fine, I was to be miserable, and make all who came to me participate in this misery. It was more agreeable to remain at home among my flowers and shrubs, my books, and my visits to Uncle Toney. Do you wonder, sir, that I seem eccentric? You know how the young love companionship—how they crave the amusements which lend zest to life. I enjoy none of this, and I am sometimes, I believe, nearly crazy. I fear you think me so, now. I want to love my brother, but he will not permit me to do so. I fear he has a nature so unlovable that such a feeling toward him animates no heart. My sisters and a drunken sot of a brother-in-law pretend to love him—but they measure their affection by the hope of gain. They reside in Louisiana, and I am glad they are not here during your stay—for you would certainly be insulted, especially if they saw the slightest evidence of esteem for you on brother's part, or kindness on mine."
"Oh! sir, how true is the Scripture, 'Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh.' Out of my heart's fulness have I spoken, and, I fear you will think, out of my heart's folly, too; and in my heart's sincerity I tell you I do not know why I have done so to you—for I have never said anything of these things to any one but cousin Ann, before. Perhaps it is because I know you are going away and you will not come to rebuke me with your presence any more; for indeed, sir, I do not know how I could meet you and not blush at the memory of this evening's walk."
"Miss Alice, I have a memory, or it may be a fancy, that in the delirium of my fever, some weeks since, I saw you like a spirit of light flitting about my bed and ministering to my wants; and I am sure, when all supposed me in extremis, you came, and on my brow placed your soft hand, and pressed it gently above my burning brain. My every nerve thrilled beneath that touch; my dead extremities trembled and were alive again. The brain resumed her functions, and the nervous fluid flashed through my entire system, and departing life came back again. You saved my life. Were the records of time and events opened to my inspection and I could read it there, I could not more believe this than I now do. Then what is due from me to you? This new evidence of confidence adds nothing to the obligation—it was full without it. But it is an inspiration I had not before. We are here, Miss Alice, within a few steps of the threshold of the house in which you were born. I am far from the land of my nativity—our meeting was strange, and this second meeting not the less so."