Various

“ I’m terribly impatient for that woman’s apology;” said Miss Tyler, as she unceremoniously opened the door and thrust in her face. “But what are you talking about with closed doors? Us, I presume! You look caught, every one of you,” and Miss Tyler turned up her disdainful nose, as if there would be no further amity till she heard a disclaimer of that offence.
“O, no, no, Lizzie, my dear!” supplicated Mrs. Varley, in her blandest and most conciliatory tone. “Pray come right in, love, and cheer up these poor disconsolate creatures while I am gone. Bring my hat and parasol, Adelaide. ”

“ I don’t know what ridiculous things that bewitched mantuamaker wont do to raise herself into genteel society, and save any more mantuamaking. But I declare, Elizabeth, I shall die without him! What shall I do? How shall I manage it? Come, you know?” Charlotte’s voice began to tremble as if she were in tears.
A crimson blush—but it was the blush of indignant innocence—burnt Jessie’s face, neck and arms. She rose to go, but Mr. Style, with contempt and disgust, and utter indignation battling with discretion for the mastery in every lineament of his face, gently drew her to a seat again. ”

“ She pressed one hand upon her heart, and caught her cousin’s arm with the other to support herself. Her whole face, which a moment before had been alive and radiant with the warm hues of happiness and youth, became as white as marble. Her very lips were bloodless; her whole frame trembled as if she had an ague fit.
He gazed on her in wonder, almost in terror. For a moment he thought that she was about to faint, almost to die; and so violent, in truth, was the affection of her nerves, that, had she not been relieved by a sudden passion of tears, it is doubtful what might have been the result. ”

“ When I saw the gay young party put off an hour ago, it brought the past so vividly to my mind, that I felt constrained to tell you how the pure may be deceived—how the virtuous may suffer, how the noble may shrink into obscurity, how the world’s idols may be forgotten; and, most of all, that nobility, education, moral greatness and purity, with all gentle virtues and all lofty aspirations, may exist in retirement, unknown and unregarded by a world that should be proud to wear them as jewels upon its bosom. But He that doeth all things well, will reward every man according to his works. ”

“ In that “better land” she is the angel who waits without the gate of the celestial city and opens it to the holy and blessed ones who crowd thither. To them she seems bright and beautiful, and her voice hath an echo of the songs of heaven, but on earth she wears a more sombre garb, and her eye hath a shade of gloom far in its misty depths, and men call her the angel of Death. This angel had for months been walking with Emma, step for step, along the path of life, and sealing with her icy touch the springs of existence. ”

“ And so it was with Theresa Allan. She was, in truth, no angel—for angels are not to be met with in the daily walks of this world—she was, indeed, neither more nor less than a mere mortal woman, mortal in all the imperfection, and narrowness, and feebleness, and inability to rise even to the height of its own best aspirations, which are peculiar to mortality—woman in all the frailty and vanity and variety, no less than in all the tenderness, the truth, the constancy, the loveliness, the sweetness of true womanhood. ”

“ During the temporary lull of the storm, a trembling angel, almost hope, hovered over us. Our souls went out toward the mariners, every dip of their oars fell upon our distended hearts, striking thence a quick gasp, and a pulse of pain—and thus we stood, the gathering darkness falling like a mountain veil between us and the objects of our anguished solicitude.
“Oh, God! what a blaze of lightning rent the gloom, and pierced, like a shower of flashing poniards, soul and sense; while a clang, as of the rending to atoms of an iron mountain, stunned our ears. ”

“ While he thus lay, a little girl stole out from a playful group, and gliding to his side threw her fond arms around him and kissed his beaming face with the quick love of a warm heart. The baby pressed his face against his sister’s with an answering lovingness, and passed his fingers through her curling hair with a low laugh of happiness, echoed with the maturity of two summer’s longer life, by the little one bending over him. How holy a thing was the love they bore each other, and how stainless were their souls as each answered to the other in purity and joy. ”

“ When it was announced to me that we were speedily to turn us homeward, my heart leaped up with a great bound, and then seemed to sink, pulseless, in my bosom. It was an agony like death; and from that hour until we landed on our native shore, my mind was a perfect chaos, or rather a tumult of opposite and contending emotions. Joy was fettered by apprehension; hope was throttled by deadly fear, and doubt, like a strong giant armed, beat back every ray of gladness, every beam of joyous anticipation, every spirit that dared to whisper of happiness to come. ”

“ It needed the love light of Sir Walter’s Scottish heart to give the scenery, in my eyes, the loveliness it wore for him. To me the rough hill, with its shingly bosom, its tufts of heather, and ravines fringed with yellow broom, and feathery fern—the precipitous rocks and wooded slopes—the pebbly beach and abrupt headland—the cloud-checkered heaven above—and the deep, clear lake that mirrored all these in its trembling bosom, were but as the multitudes of hills and lakes, which every where diversify the surface of our earth. ”

“ You are my own daughter now, and by an instrument legally attested, no longer dependent on your own exertions, but my chosen and acknowledged heiress. It is no reproach to you, my dearest child, among those whose true elevation of mind and character places them above the necessity of those artificial props, which are always called to sustain assumption—that you were reared under the clouds of misfortune, or that your own hands supported an invalid father and mother. Jessie, I honor you for it, and the gift of a fortune is but a trifling reward. ”

“ This was the garden of infancy—those clouds the fleeting sorrows of childish hearts which leaves the tear upon the smiling cheek. The fountains in the shady places were those of sinless memory—the vistas were Hope’s.
Angels on busy wings swept over the beautiful place, watching, as messengers of the Great Throne, the doings of these young creatures, who in the garden of love and peace knew not the roughness of the road which lay beyond its mossy boundaries. From time to time these angels caught a sweet one from the dancing crowd, and bore it tenderly to the bosom of the “Well Beloved.” ”

“ The lake was a tumult of warring elements. Fierce winds, waters, thunder and wrestling flames contending in a horrid turmoil. I turned away and sunk upon my knees beside the mother, whose heart felt upon its quivering chords the death-agony of the dear one who was perishing in the boiling waves. My soul was benumbed with horror; I had no word of hope for her, and there was no consolation. I lifted her form and held her to my heart, with only one wish, that then and there we might die together.”
The tremulous voice of the old man ceased, and for a while he wept like a stricken woman. ”

“ And, indeed, she seemed to feel no desire for ostentatious display or admiration, but rather delighted in the quiet of domestic life, and the unceremonious intercourse of confiding friendship. I will not tell you whose son I am, but I was not deemed an unsuitable companion for the royally-descended Lady Anna. My sister was the friend and confident of the princess, and I was a privileged visiter at her palace-home, and much in the society of her daughter from her childhood. I am an old man now, but then I was a boy, and had a young, ardent heart. I cannot tell when I first loved the Lady Anna. ”

“ Style was becoming deeply and vitally interested in Jessie, though in her simplicity and humility she was wholly unconscious of it; and if she had conceived the possibility of such a thing, she would bitterly have rebuked her own presumption, for she regarded herself altogether too humble to aspire to such a position in the world as to become the wife of such a gifted man. It is true that the lustre of his mind, the high tone of his moral endowments, and the faultlessness of his exterior moulding, charmed her—and what young heart would they not charm, I pray you tell me, dear lady reader? ”

“ The stars were looking down from the far off heavens, and the large moon was sinking behind the long low clouds in the west, gilding leaf and fountain with its brightness, and shedding a holy radiance on the face of the dying girl. Emma was reclining on a low couch by the open window, and save the low sighing of the wind all was still in that room of death. The agony of suffering that all day had racked her frame, was now passed away, and she lay in a calm slumber, with her head upon her mother’s bosom. ”

“ Upon the table by which Lizzie sat, stood the candle, and near it the apple which must be eaten as a part of the spell that was to raise the spirit of her lover. Strongly tempted was Lizzie, at this crisis, to rush from the room and abandon the bold experiment. Both hands of the clock would be on the point that marked the close of Halloween in a few seconds, and if she did not act now, the secret she so ardently desired to penetrate would still be hidden from her eyes. ”

“ The loveliest, the most utterly beloved are ever the first to leave us. Those on whom we most leaned for support and comfort during this earth-pilgrimage are ever the first victims to the unerring shaft of death. And it is well. Fondly as I have loved and deeply as I have mourned for the dead, I feel that it is well. “The branches are lopped off that the tree may fail the easier.” The prop to which we clung is torn away that the bleeding tendrils of these wrung hearts may wind themselves more closely around the Rock of Ages. ”

“ Style with any other love than that which is inspired and sanctioned by respect and friendship merely never entered her mind. Jessie was, however, the beau ideal of all his visions—the pure, pious, refined, and high-souled woman he had always hoped to meet before he surrendered his heart with its rich treasury of manly and generous love. He knew her history—you shall know more of it anon, reader—and he admired and revered the strength and unconquerable resolution with which she had combated and triumphed in the midst of the most depressing discouragements. ”

“ But the moral—perhaps it would be more charitable to say the conventional aspect of the village, is not so lovely as the natural aspect. A certain line of distinction has been drawn in society, and has long been assuming a greater and greater stringency, as an old generation passes away, and a new one refining upon its ancestor succeeds it. It is not the aristocracy of family and birth—the pride of nobility, as in England—nor the aristocracy of wit and talent, as in France—nor yet the true aristocracy of intellect and moral worth—but the peculiarly American aristocracy of money! ”

“ I know that love’s highest boon may be but to catch the last look, the last sigh—yet even with this certainty that love is dearer to me than ought else on earth. I ask for nothing but to hear you say that I am beloved—I dare expect nothing but to watch with you the fleeting of the few months that remain to you on earth, and as you stand beneath the portals of the grave to receive one last assurance of undying affection as they close between us—one promise that you will be mine—mine still, in heaven. ”

“ Style was disgusted almost to loathing, and in his soul he shrunk from the false and deceitful woman, whose deliberate wickedness and folly his own senses had so unwillingly attested. But he gallantly bowed in obedience to Charlotte’s familiar challenge, and addressed something very common-place to Miss Tyler. She was transformed in a moment, and became all vivacity, and wit, and life. She joked and frolicked, and laughed till the attention of the company was attracted, and poor Charlotte began to be most cruelly jealous. ”

“ Varley had resolved to secure the Rev. Mr. Style for her youngest daughter, and she determined that nothing should be left undone to accomplish so desirable an object. Charlotte was herself too weak to play her part well in a well concerted scheme—but in a miserably lame one, she played it wretchedly. Mr. Style saw to his infinite but necessarily concealed disgust, the snare that was spread in his sight, and though nothing in the world was easier than to escape, it subjected him to a mortifying espionage, and most disagreeable caution in his pastoral intercourse with his people. ”

“ But to our vision there is one bright spot, though earth may be dim around us; there is one hope when all other hopes fail, one refuge when tempests assail us, one friend who will never die.”
The pastor paused and gazed mournfully on the group before him. Emma was sitting with her bright beautiful eyes raised upward, while the smile on her parted lips, and the rapt expression of her face, showed that borne on the wings of faith, and the hope of that unutterable glory, she had forgotten this mortal existence, and was communing with her kindred angels. ”