CHAPTER II.
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.— Shakespeare.
Who so happy as Viola now! A dark load was lifted from her heart; her step seemed to tread on air; she would have sung for very delight as she went gaily home. It is such happiness to the pure to love — but oh, such more than happiness to believe in the worth of the One beloved. Between them there might be human obstacles — wealth, rank, man's little world. But there was no longer that dark gulf which the imagination recoils to dwell on, and which separates for ever soul from soul. He did not love her in return. Love her! But did she ask for love? Did she herself love? 'No; or she would never have been at once so humble and so bold. How merrily the ocean murmured in her ear; how radiant an aspect the commonest passer-by seemed to wear! She gained her home — she looked upon the tree, glancing, with fantastic branches, in the sun. "Yes, brother mine!" she said, laughing in her joy, "like thee, I have struggled to the light!"
She had never hitherto, like the more instructed Daughters of the North, accustomed herself to that delicious Confessional, the transfusion of thought to
