The Two Destinies

r a boy at his age. Remove him from school, ma'am, for six months; let him run about in the open air

decided my f

f's daughter, like me, was an only child; and, like me, she had no playfellows. We met in our wanderings on the solitary shores of the lake. Beginning by being inseparable companions,

appear to "sensible people," we two childre

in her father, when they laughed at us, and wondered what we should want next. Looking onward, from those days to the days of my manhood, I can vividly recall such hours of happiness as have fallen to my share. But I remember no delights of that later time comparable to the exquis

ely one to the other, at an age when the sex

obeyed the impulse to love one anothe

o way remarkable - except for being, in the ordinary phrase, "tall for my age." On her side, Mary displayed no striking attractions. She was a fragile child, with mild gray eyes and a pale complexion; singularly undemonstrative, singularly shy and silent, except when she was alone with me. Such beauty as she had, in those early days, lay in a certain artless purity and tenderness of expression, a

ur elders to check our precocious attachment, while it w

her, for the simple reason

istinction by the ladder of Parliament. An old friend, who had emigrated to America, had proposed to him a speculation in agriculture, in one of the Western States, which was to make both their fortunes. My father's eccentric fancy was struck by th

and softest-hearted of women - to s

ought of the future - without even a foreboding of what might happen when my father returned. "Sufficient for the day is the evil (or the good) thereof," had been my mother's mott

ly, however, who took a sensible

a fool; that the bailiff (a faithful servant, if ever there was one yet) was cunningly advancing his own interests by means of his daughter; and that I was a young idiot, who had developed his native reserves of imbecility at an unusually early period of life. Spe

f understanding my disposition. While she was still doubting, while my uncle was still i

soon as my uncle had left the house. The strictest search was made for me without discovering a trace of my place of refuge. My uncle departed for London, p

bedroom of the bailiff's mother. And did the bailiff's mother know it? you will ask. To which I answer: the bailiff's mother did it. And,

ar, and speak for herself - the wild and weird grandmother of gentle little Mary; th

, by a high wrinkled forehead, and by thick white hair gathered neatly under her old-fashioned "mob-cap." Report whispered (and whispered truly) that she had been a lady by birth and breeding, and that she had deliberately closed her prospects in life by marrying a man

art of her religious convictions - convictions which had long since found their chosen resting-place in the mystic doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg. The only books which she read were the works of the Swedish Seer. She mixed up Swedenborg's teachings on angels and departed spirits, on

c view, the love union between Mary and me was something too sacred and too beautiful to be tried by the mean and matter-of-fact tests set up by society. She wrote for us little formulas of prayer and praise, which we were to use when we met and when we parted, day by day. She solemnly warned her son to look upon us as two young consecrated creatures, walking unconsciously on a heavenly path of

In thanking the old woman at parting, I said to her (with a boy's sense of honor), "

my shoulder, and forced me roughly back

uppose that I ever did anything that I was ashamed of? Do you think I am ashamed of what I

t a loss for an expression, she looked over her shoulder, as if some visible creature were stationed behind her, watching what she wrote; co

erial gesture of indulgence. "His mind and my mind are written

e same formal and measured d

veled over it together. Thus, counseled by the ever

ur son George in setting his uncle's authority at defiance. I have encouraged your son Geo

should tell you with what motive

in the better world are divinely commissioned to discover each other and to begin their union in this world. The only h

erent ways of life; worldly wisdom may delude them, or may make them delude themselves, into contracting an earthly and a fallible union. It matters nothing. The time will certainly come when that union will manifest itself as

my own life. Maid, wife, and widow, I ha

was still young. I knew true love and true union before I was twenty years of age. I married, madam, in the rank from which Christ chose his apostles - I married a laboring-man. No human language can tell my h

he tie which unites the young spirits of our

squire's heir, and that my grandchild is only the bailiff's daughter. Dismiss from your mind, I implore you, the unworthy and unchristian prejudices of rank. Are we not all equal before God? Are we not all equal (even in this world) before disease and death? Not your son's happiness only, but your own peace of mind, is concerned in taki

unburdened. Now

nwittingly offended, I ask your pardon, and remain, mada

lette

ion. I see in it the prophecy - strangely fulfilled in later years - of

e afraid of Dame Dermody; and she was, besides, habitually averse to all discussions which turned on t

r was startled, one morning, by a letter from my father, which informed her that he had been unexpectedly obliged to sail for England at a moment's notice; that he had arrived

ous delay in London, were ominous, to her eyes, of misfortune to come. I am now writing of those dark days in the past, when the railway and the electric telegraph were still vision

morning came when Mary and I went out with Dermody, the bailiff, to see the last wild fowl of the season l