Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/447

Rh them, declared them to be sour—it is no such thing. Beauty is power, love, influence, rank, and riches; beauty covers a multitude of sins for which the possessor will never be punished so long as she can ravish the eyes of men with her sweet looks and smiles. Ugly folks may starve and nobody cares, but Providence sends good things to fill the mouths of the beautiful. Who does not feel his heart turn warmly towards the joyous, winsome, lovely woman, as to a flower, a picture, or anything else delightful to the eye? The very sense of pleasure it communicates to us makes us grateful to the cause, therefore we love it.

Yes, Silvia will have consolation offered to her, enough and to spare. She is altered: there is more expression in her face. She has suffered keenly, I think, since that night at Luttrell when I saw her last. She has her wish, but, if her eyes speak truth, it has brought her little peace.

I pause in untying my bonnet-strings, to think of how Paul and I would have spent this Sabbath morning if I had been his wife, he my husband. We should have walked to church, I think, across the glistening, fresh park and fields; we should have paused now and again to gather a flower or two by the way. We should have given each other lectures as to our deportment when we got into church; he would have put my bonnet straight, and made me tidy in the porch before we went in. In the Litany I am sure he would have kissed me, and in the Ten Commandments I am sure I should have kissed him, and during the sermon—for there is nobody to see—I should have slipped my hand into his big brown one.

I catch the reflection of my face in the mirror, and start back: it warns me of what I am doing—thinking; and I have vowed that I will never look back—that I will keep my eyes fixed straight and steady on the monotonous level of to-day.

"If you don't want to find the governor dancing a hornpipe on