Susan Warner

“ What is your secret, Miss Copley?"
"I beg your pardon—what secret does your ladyship mean?"
"Your secret of content and self-reliance. Pardon me—but you excite my envy and curiosity at once."
Dolly's look went back to the fire. "I have no secret," she said gravely. "I am not a philosopher. I am afraid I am not always contented. And yet I am content," she added, "with whatever the Lord gives me. I know it is good."
Lady Brierley saw tears in the eyes, which were so singularly wise and innocent at once. She was more and more interested, but would not follow Dolly's last lead. ”

“ Copley had to wait longer. It came at last, the chop; and till it came Dolly said no more. Her father watched her, and watched her, and could not take his eyes off her. The flush on her cheek and the sparkle in her eye, the moisture still lingering on her eyelashes, how sweet she was! and how indefinably lovely! Dolly had grown into a woman; she had the presence and poise that belong to a high-bred woman; and yet she had not lost her girlhood nor grown out of its artless graces; and as Mr. Copley looked he saw now and then a very childlike trembling of the under lip. ”

“ Dolly was silent.
"He's crochetty, that's what he is," Christina went on. "I hate a man to be crochetty. I shall work him out of it, if ever we come to live together."
"I don't believe you will, Christina."
"Why not?"—quickly.
"I don't think you will," Dolly repeated.
"Because you have the same notions that he has. My dear little Dolly! you don't know the world. You can't live in the world and be running your head perpetually against it; indeed you cannot. You may break your head, but you won't do anything else. And the world will laugh at you." ”

“ Dolly was a novelty, and a mystery, and a beauty. Lady Brierley's son was in Russia; so there was no harm in her being a beauty, but the contrary; it was pleasant to the eyes. And Dolly was naïve, and fresh, and independent too, with a manner as fearless and much more frank than Lady Brierley's own, and yet with as simple a reserve of womanly dignity as any lady could have; and how a girl that painted likenesses for money, and made her own bread, and learned cookery of Mrs. Jersey, could talk to Lord Brierley with such sweet, quiet freedom, was a puzzle most puzzling to the great lady. ”

“ She came home from her visit to the Bank of England in high glee and with a brave appetite for her late luncheon.
"Well," said Mrs. Copley, watching her,—"now you have tired yourself out again; and for what?"
"O mother, it was a very great sight!" said Dolly. "I wish you had been along. I think it has given me the best notion of the greatness of England that I have got from anything yet."
"Money isn't everything," said Mrs. Copley scornfully. "I dare say we have just as good banks in America."
"Father says, there is nothing equal to it in the world." ”

“ And I always think of the time when it was finished, and full, and of the things that were done there; and I fancy the times when the moonlight shone in just so after the days when Christians had been given to the lions. I never get tired of the Colosseum."
"You, too!" exclaimed Christina. "What pleasant and enlivening contemplations!"
"Yes," said Dolly. "Grand. I see the moonlight shining on the broken walls of the Colosseum, and I think of the martyrs in their white robes. There is no place brings me nearer to heaven, and the world looks so small."
"Dolly Copley!" cried Christina. ”

“ Copley found herself in a warm room, before a good supper. But the next morning it still rained. Dark skies, thick atmosphere, a gloomy outlook upon ways where no traveller for mere pleasure was to be seen; none but people bent on business of one sort or another. Yet everything was delightful to Dolly's eyes; the novelty was perfect, the picturesqueness undeniable. What she could see of the lagoon, of the vessels at anchor, the flying gondolas, the canals and the bridges over them, and the beautiful Riva, put Dolly in a rapture. ”

“ Bay and boats, shipping, palaces, canals and bridges, all coloured in such wonderful colours, brilliant in such marvellous lights and shades, as northern lands do not know, though they have their own. Yet she looked at it sadly. It was Venice; but when would her father come? All her future seemed doubtful and cloudy; and the sunshine which is merely external does not in some moods cast even a reflection of brightness upon one's inner world. If her father would come, and Lawrence would go—if her father would come and be his old self—but what large "ifs" these were. Dolly's eyes grew misty. ”

“ I begin to believe, Dolly, that you have wit enough for two."
"I am not speaking of wit; I mean strength; and I should never like any man that hadn't it; not like him in the way you mean, mother."
"Strength? what sort of strength?"
"I mean manliness; power to do right; power over himself and others; power over the wrong, to put it down, and over the right, to lift it up and give it play. I don't know that I can tell you what I mean, mother; but that is my notion of a man."
"You are romantic, I am afraid, Dolly. You have been reading novels too much." ”

“ Dolly never knew what sort of a figure the third was; she could not see herself, and she never thought about it. Yet she was a foil to the other two, and they were a foil to her, as she sat there at the corner of the hearth on a low cushion, in her black dress, and with no ornament about her other than the cameo ring. A creature very different from the beauty at the other corner of the fireplace; more delicate, more sensitive, more spiritual; oddly and inexplicably, more of a child and more of a woman. ”

“ The shoulders are not adjusted to the burden, and they feel as if they must break. Dolly's sobs were so convulsive and racking that her father was startled and shocked. What had he done? Alas, the man never knows what he has done; he cannot understand how women die, before their time, that death of the heart which is out of the range of masculine nature.
"Dolly!—Dolly!" Mr. Copley cried, "what is the matter? Don't, Dolly, if you love me. My child, what have I done? Don't you know everybody takes a little wine? Are you wiser than all the world?" ”

“ Copley. "And what do you mean by its doing me good, Dolly? What is good that you don't feel? It's like something handsome that you can't see; and if you call that good, I don't. I wonder if life's to everybody what it is to me!"
"Not exactly," said Lawrence. "Not everybody can go where he likes and do what he will, and have such an attendant handmaiden everywhere."
"Do what I will!" cried Mrs. Copley, who like other dissatisfied people did not like to have her case proved against her,—"much you know about it, Mr. St. Leger! If I had my will, I would go back to America." ”

“ Jesus said, that those who hear and obey Him are like a house planted on a rock; fixed and firm; a house that when the storms come and the winds blow, is never so much as shaken. But those who do not obey Him are like a house built on the sand. When the storms blow and the winds beat, it will fall terribly and all to ruins. It seems to me, Mr. Babbage, that that is harder than the other."
"Suppose the storms do not come?" said Rupert.
"I guess they come to most people," said Dolly soberly. ”

“ Don't you see what a difference that makes?"
"Do you mean to say, that everything that happens is for the best?"
"No," said Dolly. "Wrong can never be as good as right. Only, Rupert, God will so manage things that to His children—to His children—good shall come out of evil, and nothing really hurt them."
"Then the promise is only for them?"
"That's all. How could it be for the others?"
"I don't see it," said Rupert. "Seems to my eyes as if black was black and white white; it's the fault of my eyes, I s'pose. It is only moonshine to my eyes, that makes black white." ”

“ And then the forest had to be cut down."
"Then you like England better than America?"
"I never saw in my life anything half so beautiful as Brierley Park."
"You would be contented with such a home, wherever it might be?"
"As far as the trees went," said Dolly, with another ripple of fun breaking over her face.
"Tell me," said Lawrence, "are all American girls like you?"
"In what way? We do not all look alike."
"No, no; I do not mean looks; they are no more like you in that, than you say America resembles Brierley Park. But you are not like an English girl." ”

“ Her father, whom all her life she had loved; manly, frank, able, active, taking the lead in every society where she had seen him, making other men do his bidding always, until the passion of gaining and the lust of drink got hold of him! Was it the same, that figure in front of her, leaning on somebody's arm and glad to lean, and going with lame, unsteady gait whither he was led, so like the way his mental course had been lately? Was that her father? The bitterness of Dolly's feeling it is impossible to put into words. ”

“ Dolly's thoughts were much busied with him and with involuntary speculations about him and Christina. It was almost unavoidable. She thought, as indeed she had thought before, that Miss Thayer was a happy woman, to have so much strength and goodness belonging to her. What a shielded life hers would be, by this man's side. He would never neglect her or prefer his interests to hers; he would never give her cause to be ashamed of him; and here Dolly's lips sometimes quivered and a hot tear or two forced their way out from under her eyelids. ”

“ Delancy's library played a not insignificant part in the fortunes of Dolly Copley. As we shall see. She studied, till a ship became a romance to her; till rigging and spars and decks and guns were like the furniture of a new and strange life, which hardly belonged to the earth, being upon the sea; and the men who lived that life, and especially the men who ruled in it, grew to be invested with characteristics of power and skill and energy which gave them fabulous interest in Dolly's eyes. ”

“ Copley was out of the way or indisposed for sight-seeing, Dolly went about the old city, drinking in pleasure; revelling in historical associations, which were always a hobby of hers; feasting with untiring enjoyment on the wonders of architecture old and new; or in churches and galleries losing herself in rapt ecstasy before this or that marvel of the painter's art. It was a wonderful winter to Dolly. Many a young lady has passed the same season in the same place, but it is only one here and there who finds the hundredth part of the mental food and delectation that Dolly found. ”

“ No better time could be for seeing the utmost beauty of the flowers; and Dolly wandered in what was to her a wilderness of an enchanted land. Breakfast was forgotten; and young St. Leger was so charmed with this perfectly fresh, simple, and lively nature, that he for his part was willing to forget it indefinitely. Dolly's utter delight, and her intelligent, quick apprehension, the sparkle in her eye, the happy colour in her cheeks, made her to his fancy the rarest thing he had ever seen. ”

“ As yet, things could be seen but confusedly; the dark bank of Brierley Park with its giant trees rose up against the sky, there was no gleam on the little river, the outlines of nearer trees and bushes were merged and indistinct; but what a hum and stir and warble and chitter of happy creatures! how many creatures to be happy! and what a warm breath of incense told of the blessings of the summer day in store for them! For them, and not for Dolly? It smote her hard, the question and the answer. ”

“ No, you owe it to yourself; for in that way you could never grow to be what you might be. My dear, I have seen it tried. I have known a woman who married so, thinking that it would not matter so much; she fulfilled life's duties nobly, she was a good wife and mother and friend; but when I asked her once, after she had told me her story, how life had been to her?—I shall never forget how she turned to me and said, 'It has been a hell upon earth!' Miss Dolly, no good father and mother would buy anything at such a price; and no man that really loved a woman would have her at such a price ”

“ Underneath their branches the turf was all green and gold, for the slant sun rays came in there and gold was in the tree tops, some of the same gold; and the green shadows and the golden bands and flecks of light were all still. There was no stir of air that evening. Silence, the stillness and solitude of a woodland, were all around; the only house visible from here was the cottage Dolly had just quitted, with its rose-covered porch. ”

“ The house stood high, on the shore overlooking the sea, with a full view of Vesuvius, and it was surrounded with a paradise of orange-trees, fig-trees, pomegranates, olives, oaks and oleanders, with roses and a multitude of other flowers; in a wealth of sweetness and luxuriance of growth that northern climes know nothing of. The reception the visitors met with was joyous.
"I am so glad you are come!" cried Christina, as she carried off Dolly through the hall to her particular room. "That bad boy, Sandie, has not reported yet; but he will come; and then we will go everywhere. ”

“ From point to point the flush catches, cloud after cloud is lighted up, until under the whole heaven there is one crimson glow. Dolly was not much given to blushing, she was not at all wont to be a prey to shyness; what had come over her now? When Lawrence St. Leger had talked to her on this very same subject, she had been able to answer him with scarcely a rise of colour in her cheeks; with a calm and cool exercise of her reasoning powers, which left her fully mistress of the situation and of herself. ”

“ Sometimes her eyes filled with glad tears, at the wonderful loveliness and stateliness of nature around her; the sense of beauty overcame all other feelings; filling and satisfying and also concealing a certain promise. It was certainly the will of the Creator that all things should be thus perfect, harmonious, and fair. What was not, could be made so. But then again a shadow would come over this sunshine, as Dolly remembered the anxieties she had brought from home with her. ”