awakened softer, happier thoughts. The
footsteps of divine love were visible on the landscape. The voice of God
was heard, breathing of mercy, through the cool green boughs.

CHAPTER XLII.

Once more at Grandison Place! Once more on the breezy height which
commanded the loveliest valley creation ever formed! Light, bloom, joy
came back to eye, cheek, and heart, as I hailed again the scene where
the day-spring of love dawned on my life.

"God made the country."

Yes! I felt this truth in every bounding vein. "God made the
country,"--with its rich sweep of verdant plains, its blue winding
streams, shedding freshness and murmuring music through the smiling
fields; its silver dews, its golden sunsets, and all its luxuriance and
greenness and bloom. The black shadow of the _Tombs_ did not darken this
Eden of my youth.

Mrs. Linwood and Edith--I was with them once more. Mrs. Linwood, in her
soft twilight robe of silver grey; and Edith, with her wealth of golden
locks, and eye of heaven's own azure.

"You must not leave us again," said Mrs. Linwood, as she clasped us both
in her maternal arms. "There are but few of us, and we should not be
separated. Absence is the shadow of death, and falls coldly on the
heart."

She glanced towards Edith, whose beautiful face was paler and thinner
than it was wont to be. She had pined for the brother of whom I had
robbed her; for the world offered her nothing to fill the void left in
the depths of her loving heart. We were all happier together. We cannot
give ourselves up to the dominion of an exclusive passion, whatever it
may be, without an outrage to nature, which sooner or later revenges the
wrong inflicted. With all my romantic love for Ernest, I had often
sighed for the companionship of one of my own sex; and now, restored to
Edith, whom I had always regarded a little lower than the angels, I felt
that if love was more rapturous than friendship, it was not more divine.

They knew that I had suffered. They had sympathized with me, pitied
me,--(if Mrs. Linwood blamed me for imprudence, she never expressed it);
and I felt that they loved me better for having passed under the cloud.
There was no allusion made to the awful events which were present in the
minds of all, on our first reunion. If Mrs. Linwood noticed, that after
the glow of excitement faded from my cheek it was paler than it was wont
to be, she did not tell me so, but her kiss was more tender, her glance
more