How many various influences had Edith to combat! how many were there working in her favor! What a conflict was it all in the poor heart of the sorrowful and loving Lucy!
Edith was a skilful physician for the heart—skilful beyond her years.
Love was the great want of Lucy.
Edith soon persuaded her that she knew how to supply it. She was so solicitous, so watchful, so tender, so—
Suddenly the eyes of Lucy gushed with a volume of tears, and she buried her face in Edith's bosom; and she wept—how passionately!—the sobbings of an infant succeeding to the more wild emotions of the soul, and placing her, like a docile and exhausted child, at the entire control of her companion, even as if she had been a mother.
"Do with me as you will, Edith, my sister."
There was really no argument, there were no reasons given, which could persuade any mind, having first resolved on the one purpose, to abandon it for the other. How many reasons had Lucy for being firm in the first resolution she had made!
But the ends of wisdom do not depend upon the reasons which enforce conviction. Nay, conviction itself, where the heart is concerned, is rarely to be moved by any efforts, however noble, of the simply reasoning faculty.
Shall we call them arts—the processes by which Edith Colleton had persuaded Lucy Munro to her purposes? No! it was the sweet nature, the gentle virtues, the loving tenderness, the warm sympathies, the delicate tact—these, superior to art and reason, were made evident to the suffering girl, in the long interview in which they were together; and her soul melted under their influence, and the stubborn will was subdued, and again she murmured lovingly—
"Do with me as you will, my sister."