Queenie's whim, Volume 3 (of 3) : $b A novelCarey, Rosa Nouchette
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Queenie's whim, Volume 3 (of 3) : $b A novel
Carey, Rosa Nouchette
English fiction -- 19th century
"Those that have sympathy here have sympathy there," she had asserted
with entire faith and simplicity. Why did not he, why did not
everybody, understand?
As for Garth, he felt a little moved and excited, stirred by her
earnestness, yet not wholly comprehending it, and quite out of his
element.
CHAPTER II.
"DO YOU LIKE ME AS WELL AS YOU DID THEN?"
"The true one of youth's love, proving a faithful helpmate in those
years when the dream of life is over, and we live in its
realities."--_Southey._
Garth pondered somewhat heavily over Queenie's words that evening.
In spite of his warm human sympathies his imagination was still
undeveloped. Under the margin of those brief sentences lay
unexplored meanings, whole worlds of thought and fancy that he only
dimly comprehended, and yet he felt himself stirred by the girl's
enthusiasm.
"You have done me good," he said to her, when tea was over and Emmie
had betaken herself to Patience. He had risen to take leave, but he
still lingered, as though loath to break the tranquillity of the
scene. "Something had worried me and put me into a bad humor with
myself and all the world, but now I feel better."
"I am glad I have done you good," she returned simply.
When he had left her she knelt down by the hearth again and shielded
her face from the flame. All sorts of bright, visionary pictures
danced under the light of the spluttering fir-knots; thoughts almost
too great and beautiful to be grasped brushed past her like wings.
Queenie was only dreaming, as girls will sometimes, only somehow her
dreams were better than other women's realities. She was thinking of
Garth, marvelling a little over his manner that evening. He had been
kinder, gentler, and yet somehow different.
She was not quite so sure, after all, that he meant to marry Dora.
She had mentioned her name once, and he had answered her in a
constrained manner, and had then changed the subject. Could Miss
Cunningham have given him cause for displeasure?
Queenie was not sufficiently experienced in the ways of the world to
know how quickly hearts are caught at the rebound. She had no idea
of the real state of the case, and that Garth's first thought in his
mortification had been to seek solace in her friendship. She only
knew that somehow Garth had been nicer, and she had done him good.
"What does it matter if one is disappointed here?" thought the young
visionary in that first sweet gush of satisfaction, "that it is all
giving and no return--at least, not the return that one wants? life
will not last for ever. In that bright hereafter there will be no
marrying or giving in marriage, the Bible tells us that. Nothing but
love, which, after all, is another name for life. We are only hiding
our treasures now, heaping them up in silence and darkness, like that
poor Fraulein Heldrig. By-and-by, up there, those whom we love will
call to us and stretch out their hands, and we shall come bearing our
sheaves with us."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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