should defend herself from
accusation," cried I.

"Certainly,--in the spirit of gentleness and Christian love. But she
must not murmur; she must not complain. But it is not the accusation
that admits of defence, the arrow that flies at noonday, that is most to
be feared. It is the cold, inscrutable glance, the chilled and altered
manner, the suspicion that walketh in darkness,--it is these that try
the strength of woman's love, and gnaw with slow but certain tooth the
cable-chain that holds the anchor of her fidelity. These are the evil
spirits which prayer and fasting alone can cast out. They may fly before
the uplifted eye and bended knee, but never before the flash of anger or
the word of recrimination."

"What a solemn view you give me of married life!" I exclaimed, while the
work dropped from my hands. "What fearful responsibilities you place
before me,--I tremble, I dare not meet them."

"It is not too late,--the irrevocable vow is not yet breathed,--the path
is not yet entered. If the mere description of duties makes you turn
pale with dread, what will the reality be? I do not seek to terrify, but
to convince. I received you as a precious charge from a dying mother,
and I vowed over her grave to love, protect, and cherish you, as my own
daughter. I saw the peculiar dangers to which you were liable from your
ardent genius and exquisite sensibility, and I suffered you to pass
through a discipline which my wealth made unnecessary, and which you
have nobly borne. I did not wish my son to love you, not because you
were the child of obscurity, but because I had constituted myself the
guardian of your happiness, and I feared it would be endangered by a
union with him. How dear is your happiness to me,--how holy I deem the
charge I have assumed,--you may know by my telling you this. Never
mother idolized a son as I do Ernest. He is precious as my heart's best
blood,--he is the one idol that comes between me and my God. My love is
more intense for the anxiety I feel on his account. If I could have
prevented his loving;--but how could I, in the constant presence of an
object so formed to inspire all the romance of love? I knew the serpent
slept in the bottom of the fountain, and when the waters were stirred it
would wake and uncoil. Gabriella!" she added, turning towards me, taking
both hands in hers, and looking me in the face with her clear, eloquent,
dark gray eyes, "you may be the angel commissioned by Providence to