leisure wherein to cultivate the richer and sweeter
flowers of their nature. How artificial had been
the delights with which she soothed herself!
Here, all the time, was the reality; here in this poor
home, brooded over by the curse of poverty, whence
should come shame and woe and death. What to
her now were the elegance of art, the loveliness of
nature? Beauty had been touched by mortality,
and its hues were of the corpse, of the grave.
Would the music of a verse ever again fill her with
rapture? How meaningless were all such toys of
thought to one whose path lay through the valley of
desolation!
Thus did Emily think and feel in this sombre season,
the passionate force of her imagination making itself
the law of life and the arbiter of her destiny.
She could not take counsel with time; her temperament
knew nothing of that compromise with ardours and impulses
which is the wisdom of disillusion. Circumstances
willed that she should suffer by the nobleness of
her instincts those endowments which might in a happier
lot have exalted her to such perfection of calm joy
as humanity may attain, were fated to be the source
of misery inconceivable by natures less finely cast.
THEIR SEVERAL WAYS
As Wilfrid quitted the house, the gate was opened
by Jessie Cartwright, who, accompanied by one of her
sisters, was bringing Emily some fine grapes, purchased,
in the Cartwright manner, without regard to expense.
The girls naturally had their curiosity excited by
the stranger of interesting, even of aristocratic,
appearance, who, as he hurried by, east at them a
searching look.
‘Now, who ever may that be?’ murmured
Jessie, as she approached the door.
‘A doctor, I dare say,’ was her sister’s
suggestion.
’A doctor! Not he, indeed. He has
something to do with Emily, depend upon it.’
The servant, opening to them, had to report that Miss
Hood was too unwell to-day to receive visitors.
Jessie would dearly have liked to ask who it was that
apparently had been an exception, but even she lacked
the assurance necessary to the putting of such a question.
The girls left their offering, and went their way
home; the stranger afforded matter for conversation
throughout the walk.
Wilfrid did not go straight to the Baxendales’.
In his distracted state he felt it impossible to sit
through luncheon, and he could not immediately decide
how to meet Mrs. Baxendale, whether to take her into
his confidence or to preserve silence on what had happened.
He was not sure that he would be justified in disclosing
the details of such an interview; did he not owe it
to Emily to refrain from submitting her action to
the judgment of any third person? If in truth
she were still suffering from the effects of her illness,
it was worse than unkind to repeat her words; if,
on the other hand, her decision came of adequate motives,
