“’Tis an old tale, and often told.”

SIR WALTER SCOTT

That evening some people who were near them were talking about it, and that made Tom ask Clara if her friend was in the habit of doing startling things.

“Should you think so to look at her now?” queried Clara, looking across the room to where Miss Ercildoune stood.

“Indeed I shouldn’t,” Tom replied; and indeed no one would who saw her then. “She’s as sweet as a sugar-plum,” he added, as he continued to look. “What does she mean by getting off such rampant discourses? She never wrote them herself, don’t tell me; at least somebody else put her up to it, that strong-minded-looking teacher over yonder, for instance. She looks capable of anything, and something worse, in the denouncing way; poor little beauty was her cat’s-paw this morning.”

“O Tom, how you talk! She is nobody’s cat’s-paw. I can tell you she does her own thinking and acting too. If you’d just go and do something hateful, or impose on somebody, one of the waiters, for instance, you’d see her blaze up, fast enough.”

“Ah! philanthropic?”

Clara looked puzzled. “I don’t know; we have some girls here who are all the time talking about benevolence, and charity, and the like, and they have a little sewing-circle to make up things to be sold for the church mission, or something, I don’t know just what; but Francesca won’t go near it.”

“Democratic, then, maybe.”

“No, she isn’t, not a bit. She’s a thorough little aristocrat: so exclusive she has nothing to say to the most of us. I wonder she ever took me for a friend, though I do love her dearly.”

Tom looked down at his bright little sister, and thought the wonder was not a very great one, but didn’t say so; reserving his gallantries for somebody else’s sister.

“You seem greatly taken with her, Tom.”

“I own the soft impeachment.”

“Well, you’ll have a fair chance, for she’s coming home with me. I wrote to mamma, and she says, bring her by all means, and Mr. Ercildoune gives his consent; so it is all settled.”

“Mr. Ercildoune! is there no Mrs. E.?”

“None, her mother died long ago; and her father has not been here, so I can’t tell you anything about him. There: do you see that elegant-looking lady talking with Professor Hale? that is her aunt, Mrs. Lancaster. She is English, and is here only on a visit. She wants to take Francesca home with her in the spring, but I hope she won’t.”

“Why, what is it to you?”

“I am afraid she will stay, and then I shall never see her any more.”

“And why stay? do you fancy England so very fascinating?”

“No, it is not that; but Francesca don’t like America; she’s forever saying something witty and sharp about our ‘democratic institutions,’ as she calls them; and, if you had looked this morning, you’d have seen that she didn’t sing The Star-Spangled Banner with the rest of us. Her voice is splendid, and Professor Hale wanted her to lead, as she often does, but she wouldn’t sing that, she said, no, not for anything; and though we all begged, she refused, flat.”

“Shocking! what total depravity! I wonder is she converting Surrey to her hérésies.”

No, she wasn’t; not unless silence is more potent than words; for after they had danced together Surrey brought her to one of the great windows facing towards the sea, and, leaning over her chair, there was stillness between them as their eyes went out into the night.

A wild night! great clouds drifted across the moon, which shone out anon, with light intensified, defining the stripped trees and desolate landscape, and then the beach, and

“Marked with spray
The sunken reefs, and far away
The unquiet, bright Atlantic plain,”

while through all sounded incessantly the mournful roar of buffeting wind and surging tide; and whether it was the scene, or the solemn undertone of the sea, the dance music, which a little while before had been so gay, sounded like a wail.

How could it be otherwise? Passion is akin to pain. Love never yet penetrated an intense nature and made the heart light; sentiment has its smiles, its blushes, its brightness, its words of fancy and feeling, readily and at will; but when the internal sub-soiling is broken up, the heart swells with a steady and tremendous pressure till the breast feels like bursting; the lips are dumb, or open only to speak upon indifferent themes. Flowers may be played with, but one never yet cared to toy with flame.

There are souls that are created for one another in the eternities, hearts that are predestined each to each, from the absolute necessities of their nature; and when this man and this woman come face to face, these hearts throb and are one; these souls recognize “my master!” “my mistress!” at the first glance, without words uttered or vows pronounced.

These two young lives, so fresh, so beautiful; these beings, in many things such antipodes, so utterly dissimilar in person, so unlike, yet like; their whole acquaintance a glance on a crowded street and these few hours of meeting, looked into one another’s eyes, and felt their whole nature set each to each, as the vast tide “of the bright, rocking ocean sets to shore at the full moon.”

These things are possible. Friendship is excellent, and friendship may be called love; but it is not love. It may be more enduring and placidly satisfying in the end; it may be better, and wiser, and more prudent, for acquaintance to beget esteem, and esteem regard, and regard affection, and affection an interchange of peaceful vows: the result, a well-ordered life and home. All this is admirable, no doubt; an owl is a bird when you can get no other; but the love born of a moment, yet born of eternity, which comes but once in a lifetime, and to not one in a thousand lives, unquestioning, unthinking, investigating nothing, proving nothing, sufficient unto itself, ah, that is divine; and this divine ecstasy filled these two souls.

Unconsciously. They did not define nor comprehend. They listened to the sea where they sat, and felt tears start to their eyes, yet knew not why. They were silent, and thought they talked; or spoke, and said nothing. They danced; and as he held her hand and uttered a few words, almost whispered, the words sounded to the listening ear like a part of the music to which they kept time. They saw a multitude of people, and exchanged the compliments of the evening, yet these people made no more impression upon their thoughts than gossamer would have made upon their hands.

“Come, Francesca!” said Clara Russell, breaking in upon this, “it is not fair for you to monopolize my cousin Will, who is the handsomest man in the room; and it isn’t fair for Will to keep you all to himself in this fashion. Here is Tom, ready to scratch out his eyes with vexation because you won’t dance with him; and here am I, dying to waltz with somebody who knows my step, to say nothing of innumerable young ladies and gentlemen who have been casting indignant and beseeching glances this way: so, sir, face about, march!” and away the gay girl went with her prize, leaving Francesca to the tender mercies of half a dozen young men who crowded eagerly round her, and from whom Tom carried her off with triumph and rejoicing.

The evening was over at last, and they were going away. Tom had said good night.

“You are to be in New York, at my uncle’s, Clara tells me.”

“It is true.”

“I may see you there?”

For answer she put out her hand. He took it as he would have taken a delicate flower, laid his other hand softly, yet closely, over it, and, without any adieu spoken, went away.

“Tom always declared Willie was a little queer, and I’m sure I begin to think so,” said Clara, as she kissed her friend and departed to her room.