Ann S. Stephens

“ To this place, so beautiful in itself, so full of painful associations, Isabel Chester was brought in less than a week after her mother's burial. Since that day she had drooped like a broken lily. The terrible grief to which her delicate nature had bent and swayed like a reed; the sudden change from a home of quiet and tranquil love, to the most bitter solitude known to the human heart—that of a crowd—had completely prostrated the orphan. A slow fever preyed upon her; she could not speak without feeling the hot tears gush from her eyes. ”

“ It was the one passion of a life-time—the love of a warm, impulsive heart—of a vivid intellect, and, say what we will, this is a love that never changes—never dies. It may be perverted—it may be wrestled with and cast to the earth for a time; but such love once planted in a woman's bosom, burns there so long as a spark is left to feed its vitality; burns there, it may be, for ever and ever, a blessing or a curse.
To Ada Leicester it was a curse, for it outlived scorn. ”

“ The soft gray clouds which had floated over them only a little while before were turning leaden and heavy, so heavy that the ocean was one mass of blackness, as if the mighty deep had veiled itself with mourning, while the throes of a coming tempest heaved its inner depths.
The man North had left her at last—she was utterly alone.
Never in this world had a human being been cast forth to such utter desolation. She looked down on the torn earth at her feet, and her poor heart ached to lie down with that other woman who had found her rest so early, and was at peace. ”

“ The ivy about the window shed a lovely twilight around her, and the shadows of its trembling leaves tinted the snowy whiteness of the pillow on which her cheek rested, with fairy-like embroidery. The place was like heaven to her. Here this young girl lay, thrilled heart and soul by the first passion of her womanhood. This feeling that burned on her cheek, and swelled in her bosom, was a delicious insanity. There was no hope in it—no chance for reason, but Hurst loved her, and that one thought filled the moment with joy. ”

“ She reeled in the saddle, and nothing but her desperate hold upon the rein kept her from falling.
I knew her, notwithstanding the masculine hat and cravat, the black skirt sweeping behind her like a thunder-cloud, and the deathly paleness of her face. I knew her the first moment, and shrunk back into the undergrowth, not with fear but loathing. Oh, how I did hate that woman. Some persons think children cannot hate. They never studied a child like me. She came on, pale as marble, reeling with exhaustion, but with a strong will firing her eyes till they gleamed like stars beneath her hat. ”

“ All at once the tumult ceased; a frightful stillness came over that dark crowd; men shrunk away from its outskirts into the darkness, frightened by their own demon work. She clung to the vines, and looked down dizzily; a feeling of horrible relief came over her. She turned her face to the rock, and held her breath, listening, as if his voice could still reach her.
It was near morning before the crowd around that tree dispersed. Then she crept feebly down the rocky fissure, and stood trembling on the trampled grass. One glance upon the pine, and she turned away, sick at heart. ”

“ Youth and hope and earnest feeling gave to his nature the energy of middle age.
He went down those flights of winding stairs, with every nerve of his body awake to the joy singing at his heart. What cared he that his child was born in an Almshouse? Was it not his child, was not Catharine alive? Was he not young, and strong to work, to suffer, to be her protector, body and soul forever? For he could imagine no time when his love for the sweet girl would cease to be immortal. ”

“ When his young wife in all the bloom of her goodness and beauty had made him the father of a daughter, her living shadow, vague, dark apprehension seized upon him, and weeks before that young mother sickened and died, the blackness of a great sorrow overshadowed his soul. He stood by her grave and saw the fresh earth heaped upon it, and, shaking his venerable white head, when his friends would have consoled him, went away into the desolation of his old age, a broken-hearted man, weary of life, and yet afraid to die. ”

“ All this revealed by rainbows of light trembling down from the cut-glass chandeliers, formed a picture which fairly dazzled Eva Laurence, who stood in the crimson light of the back room, lost and wondering, herself, unconsciously, the most beautiful object present.
Ross, whose genius had created all this, looked on her smiling. Never had his rare gifts wrought out greater happiness to himself. It was like leading this young girl into a paradise of his own creation; one, too, in which he resolved that she should remain all her life, if it so pleased her. ”

“ Thus, as I said awhile ago, Katharine sat in her prison, reading. The Bible lay open on her lap; but while her eyelids drooped, and their lashes shaded those deep blue orbs, they were tinged with the depths of their color, as violets cast purple shadows where the sun touches them. The golden tresses of her hair, embraided around her head, scintillated the sunbeams that fell through her prison bars like a glory. Her dress was white dimity, a fabric much worn in those days, which fell heavily around her like the marble drapery of a statue. ”

“ Bitter, indeed, must have been the passion, and deep the love which had so long kept her upon the trail of her husband, and severe must have been the toil she had endured tracking him, like a sleuth-hound among the winding-paths of the mountains. Love, fiery love—the one master-passion of an Indian woman’s life—must have been entirely blotted out, and all the serpents that lurk among human passions in the hour of its darkness, must have entered and held triumphant sway in her savage nature. ”

“ The last breath she had seen him draw was a taunt, his last look an insult; and yet these very memories embittered her grief. He had turned the silver thread of her life into iron, but it broke with his existence, leaving her appalled and objectless. She never had, never could love another; and what is a woman on earth without love as a memory, a passion, or a hope?
Her grief became a wild passion. She strove to assuage it in reckless gaiety, and plunged into all the excitements of artificial life with a fervor that made every hour of her existence a tumult. ”

“ A mountain ash, perfectly red with great clusters of berries, shot out from a little hollow between two ledges, and overhung the place where Mr. Sharp had found foothold. As if its own wealth of berries were not enough, a bitter-sweet vine had sprung up in the same hollow, and coiling itself around the tree, deluged it with a shower of golden clusters that mingled upon the same branch with the bright red fruit of the ash.
"Oh, was there ever on earth anything so beautiful?" cried Mary, disentangling the delicate ends of the vines flung down by her benefactor. "Oh, look, Isabel, look!" ”

“ The old lake house flung down uncouth shadows on one hand, a gnarled oak pushed its gaunt limbs far over the waters on the other. The rushes around her swayed and moaned in the wind like living things in pain.
Was it this weird picture that brought Ruth to a sense of her own condition? Did it seem to her as if she had already accomplished her purpose, and was entering upon its punishment? Who can answer for the impulses of a soul in its passions of distress? No two events are alike in all the tumultuous actions of life. ”

“ MARY MARGARET DILLON. The poor young creature was aroused at length from the chill torpor that had seized upon her; but she awoke to a hot flush of fever, raving with pathetic wildness of a thousand things which no one comprehended—of a husband that had left her in the depths of trouble, of the child that she fancied herself clasping, and of the nurse who seemed forever and ever over her bed, as she persisted in thinking, like a great, black statue that had chilled her heart to death beneath its shadow. ”

“ A broken sigh, a shudder that made the white drapery rustle as if in a current of wind, and the bride lay with her eyes wide open staring upon the Sibyl.
The dead face grew more and more pallid; the dark one above glowed and gloated over it like a ghoul. Then the soft light was darkened, and the bridegroom leaned over his bride listening for her breath. As he stooped, the curtains opposite were flung back, the lace torn away, and like an exulting demon the old woman laughed over the living and the dead. ”