s there a shade of resemblance between the
half-sisters. As compared with Kate, Hope showed a more abundant
physical life; there was more blood in her; she had ampler outlines, and
health more absolutely unvaried, for she had yet to know the experience
of a day's illness. Kate seemed born to tread upon a Brussels carpet,
and Hope on the softer luxury of the forest floor. Out of doors her
vigor became a sort of ecstasy, and she walked the earth with a jubilee
of the senses, such as Browning attributes to his Saul.

This inexhaustible freshness of physical organization seemed to open the
windows of her soul, and make for her a new heaven and earth every day.
It gave also a peculiar and almost embarrassing directness to her mental
processes, and suggested in them a sort of final and absolute value, as
if truth had for the first time found a perfectly translucent medium.
It was not so much that she said rare things, but her very silence was
eloquent, and there was a great deal of it. Her girlhood had in it
a certain dignity as of a virgin priestess or sibyl. Yet her hearty
sympathies and her healthy energy made her at home in daily life, and
in a democratic society. To Kate, for instance, she was a necessity of
existence, like light or air. Kate's nature was limited; part of
her graceful equipoise was narrowness. Hope was capable of far more
self-abandonment to a controlling emotion, and, if she ever erred,
would err more widely, for it would be because the whole power of her
conscience was misdirected. "Once let her take wrong for right," said
Aunt Jane, "and stop her if you can; these born saints give a great deal
more trouble than children of this world, like my Kate." Yet in daily
life Hope yielded to her cousin nine times out of ten; but the tenth
time was the key to the situation. Hope loved Kate devotedly; but Kate
believed in her as the hunted fugitive believes in the north star.

To these maidens, thus united, came Emilia home from Europe. The father
of Harry and Hope had been lured into a second marriage with Emilia's
mother, a charming and unscrupulous woman, born with an American body
and a French soul. She having once won him to Paris, held him there
life-long, and kept her step-children at a safe distance. She arranged
that, even after her own death, her daughter should still remain abroad
for education; nor was Emilia ordered back until she brought down some
scandal by a romantic attempt to elope from boardin