Was it then all over between them? Might he not bethink himself, and
come again, and say he was sorry he had so left her? He might indeed;
but would that make any difference to her? Had he not beyond a doubt
disclosed his real way of thinking and feeling? If he could speak thus
now, after they had talked so much, what spark of hope was there in
marriage?
To forget her friends that she might go into _society_ a countess!
The thought was as contemptible as poverty-stricken. She would leave
such ambition to women that devoured novels and studied the peerage! One
loving look from human eyes was more to her than the admiration of the
world! She would go back to her mother as soon as she had found her poor
Corney, and seen her people through the smallpox! If only the house was
her own, that she might turn it into a hospital! She would make it a
home to which any one sick or sad, any cast out of the world, any
betrayed by seeming friends, might flee for shelter! She would be more
than ever the sister and helper of her own--cling faster than ever to
the skirts of the Lord's garment, that the virtue going out of him might
flow through her to them! She would be like Christ, a gulf into which
wrong should flow and vanish--a sun radiating an uncompromising love!
How easy is the thought, in certain moods, of the loveliest, most
unselfish devotion! How hard is the doing of the thought in the face of
a thousand unlovely difficulties! Hester knew this, but, God helping,
was determined not to withdraw hand or foot or heart.
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