Page:Orange Grove.djvu/370

 of life, was illustrated in Milly. Isolated as she was in every human tie, her affection for Lilly had stirred her soul's depths as they were never stirred before. When sighing for one more touch of that little hand, one more gentle pressure of that soft cheek against her own, one more merry twinkle of those eyes before which sadness vanished like the misty morning vapors before the rising sun, Mrs. Claremont, divining her feelings, thus soliloquized, "Why shut up in the dark tomb all the rich blossoming of that young life? Why not permit it to exhale its fragracefragrance [sic] among these numberless relics that need only its inspiring breath to consecrate them as joyous mementoes of the love and happiness this world has the capacity to confer, and the other world claims only to purify and perfect? She is leading us into the deep waters that we may gather thence its choicest pearls."

A new idea was suggested to Milly. She turned to her novel with a fresh interest, and felt the quickening of new powers, and revelations of a higher order of beauty for which those latent germs of undefined aspirations had struggled from her earliest memory to be developed into their highest capabilities. Very different from those labored effusions which excited Kate's facetious criticisms—the passages now coming from her pen were full of meaning and rich with inspiration. Lilly was no longer a departed spirit, but a presiding genius that stood between her and the pages of her book, ready to interpret those dark phases of human experience which for a time shut us out from the beauty and glory of this out-