Page:Francesca Carrara 3.pdf/85

82 Onward passes that complaining wind through the quiet glades, like the angel of death mourning over the beauty it is commissioned to destroy. At every sweep down falls a shower of sapless leaves—ghosts of the spring—with a dry, sorrowful rustle; and every day the eye misses some bright colour of yesterday, or marks some bough left entirely bare and sear; and ever and anon, on some topmost branch, as the foliage is quite swept off, a deserted nest is visible—love, spring, and music, passed away together.

But the heart is its own world, and the outward influence takes its tone from that within. With how much lighter a step, with how much brighter an eye, did Francesca wander through the forest, even in the last desolation of autumn, than she did in all the bloom and buoyancy of spring! Not all the natural horror and pity, deeply and keenly felt at Francis's awful death, could disturb the sweet and secret satisfaction now garnered up in her inmost thoughts. All old belief in the good, the beautiful, and the true, revived within her. Doubt, that most oppressive atmosphere upon the moral existence, rolled away like a vapour from the future; once more she could hope and trust—she felt happy enough for forgiveness. It had not been human had she not