Her sister looked into her face, attentively.She seemed in doubt.
'I saw Mr.Warden, and confided in his honour; charged him with my secret, on the eve of his and my departure.He kept it.Do you understand me, dear?'
Grace looked confusedly upon her.She scarcely seemed to hear.
'My love, my sister!' said Marion, 'recall your thoughts a moment;listen to me.Do not look so strangely on me.There are countries, dearest, where those who would abjure a misplaced passion, or would strive, against some cherished feeling of their hearts and conquer it, retire into a hopeless solitude, and close the world against themselves and worldly loves and hopes for ever.
When women do so, they assume that name which is so dear to you and me, and call each other Sisters.But, there may be sisters, Grace, who, in the broad world out of doors, and underneath its free sky, and in its crowded places, and among its busy life, and trying to assist and cheer it and to do some good, - learn the same lesson;and who, with hearts still fresh and young, and open to all happiness and means of happiness, can say the battle is long past, the victory long won.And such a one am I! You understand me now?'
Still she looked fixedly upon her, and made no reply.
'Oh Grace, dear Grace,' said Marion, clinging yet more tenderly and fondly to that breast from which she had been so long exiled, 'if you were not a happy wife and mother - if I had no little namesake here - if Alfred, my kind brother, were not your own fond husband -from whence could I derive the ecstasy I feel to-night! But, as Ileft here, so I have returned.My heart has known no other love, my hand has never been bestowed apart from it.I am still your maiden sister, unmarried, unbetrothed: your own loving old Marion, in whose affection you exist alone and have no partner, Grace!'
She understood her now.Her face relaxed: sobs came to her relief; and falling on her neck, she wept and wept, and fondled her as if she were a child again.
When they were more composed, they found that the Doctor, and his sister good Aunt Martha, were standing near at hand, with Alfred.
'This is a weary day for me,' said good Aunt Martha, smiling through her tears, as she embraced her nieces; 'for I lose my dear companion in making you all happy; and what can you give me, in return for my Marion?'
'A converted brother,' said the Doctor.
'That's something, to be sure,' retorted Aunt Martha, 'in such a farce as - '
'No, pray don't,' said the doctor penitently.
'Well, I won't,' replied Aunt Martha.'But, I consider myself ill used.I don't know what's to become of me without my Marion, after we have lived together half-a-dozen years.'
'You must come and live here, I suppose,' replied the Doctor.'We shan't quarrel now, Martha.'
'Or you must get married, Aunt,' said Alfred.
'Indeed,' returned the old lady, 'I think it might be a good speculation if I were to set my cap at Michael Warden, who, I hear, is come home much the better for his absence in all respects.But as I knew him when he was a boy, and I was not a very young woman then, perhaps he mightn't respond.So I'll make up my mind to go and live with Marion, when she marries, and until then (it will not be very long, I dare say) to live alone.What do YOU say, Brother?'
'I've a great mind to say it's a ridiculous world altogether, and there's nothing serious in it,' observed the poor old Doctor.
'You might take twenty affidavits of it if you chose, Anthony,'
said his sister; 'but nobody would believe you with such eyes as those.'
'It's a world full of hearts,' said the Doctor, hugging his youngest daughter, and bending across her to hug Grace - for he couldn't separate the sisters; 'and a serious world, with all its folly - even with mine, which was enough to have swamped the whole globe; and it is a world on which the sun never rises, but it looks upon a thousand bloodless battles that are some set-off against the miseries and wickedness of Battle-Fields; and it is a world we need be careful how we libel, Heaven forgive us, for it is a world of sacred mysteries, and its Creator only knows what lies beneath the surface of His lightest image!'
You would not be the better pleased with my rude pen, if it dissected and laid open to your view the transports of this family, long severed and now reunited.Therefore, I will not follow the poor Doctor through his humbled recollection of the sorrow he had had, when Marion was lost to him; nor, will I tell how serious he had found that world to be, in which some love, deep-anchored, is the portion of all human creatures; nor, how such a trifle as the absence of one little unit in the great absurd account, had stricken him to the ground.Nor, how, in compassion for his distress, his sister had, long ago, revealed the truth to him by slow degrees, and brought him to the knowledge of the heart of his self-banished daughter, and to that daughter's side.
Nor, how Alfred Heathfield had been told the truth, too, in the course of that then current year; and Marion had seen him, and had promised him, as her brother, that on her birth-day, in the evening, Grace should know it from her lips at last.
'I beg your pardon, Doctor,' said Mr.Snitchey, looking into the orchard, 'but have I liberty to come in?'
Without waiting for permission, he came straight to Marion, and kissed her hand, quite joyfully.
'If Mr.Craggs had been alive, my dear Miss Marion,' said Mr.