ed and copper tints of
autumn, when the sun shone through them. Down behind he dropped when the
day was done; sometimes a ball of fire, at others bathed in roseate
hues, tinged with all the wondrous grades of color, and making fleecy
islands in a far-off, weird world, dream-haunted. She used to study the
grand effects of shifting light, that made the hill bold and strong, or
fused it into dreamy harmonies that seemed to have the subtile essence
of music; then contrasts that were abrupt and apparently dissonant,
quite against well-known edicts of human taste. Who was right,--the
great Author of all? She smiled to herself when she heard people talk so
glibly of nature, as if the one little rose-leaf were the whole world.

The other picture held in its soft, still, light, an old-fashioned,
low-gabled house with wide eaves; a broad doorway, with the upper half
always open in summer; a well with curb and sweep and bucket where
farm-hands came to drink; a pond with a shady side, where cows herded in
their peaceful fashion, wading knee-deep on hot days, chewing their cud
contentedly at others, browsing through golden hours; fields of glowing
grain, then tawny stubble, a bit of corn with nodding tassels, and not
infrequently a group of children, picturesque in this far light. It all
stood out with the clearness of a stereoscope.

She had her ambitions too, this bright little girl. They were tinctured
with the crudeness of youth, and its boundless vision, it is true; and
sometimes the passion of despair seized her soul in a cold grasp, when
she felt hemmed in on every side, and longed for some opening, some step
in the great world higher than fashionable frivolity.

Miss Barry had no taste for famous women. They were well enough in the
world: she paid a proper and polite deference to Mrs. Somerville, Mrs.
Browning, and Rosa Bonheur,--that kind of intellectual deference that
sets them out of the sphere of ordinary women. Wives and mothers were
better for the every-day life of the world; since pictures and poetry
were luxuries, accessories, but not home or food or clothes. Though she
had missed her woman's destiny, she had not lost faith in it; though she
had held out her hand to the woman who had made shipwreck of her own
life for the wild, graceless brother's sake, she still looked on clear
seas and smooth sailing as possible for lovers' barks. In her plans for
Sylvie there was a fine, manly, generous husband; a love so sweet a