Page:Rebecca.pdf/17

196 is not the reading of real life! Rebecca will enter the cold and cruel world, homeless, friendless, moneyless! Her refined nature will soon revolt at the meanness more than at the privation of poverty. Then will her beauty—for she is fair, very fair—catch the eye of some young cavalier (troth, and but our king trains them in goodly practices!): first there will be refusal and reserve; then pity and relief, and the woman's heart will be caught by some woman's toy; folly will succeed to fancy; and a few soft words will disperse in air all that her father and her Bible have taught. "Nay, let me finish the picture," he continued, upon a somewhat impatient gesture of his friend. "After vanity comes disappointment—the lover tires, or she herself may change; the same tale is told by another, and the same sequel ensues—save that the love is not so deep, and the faith not so true. A few years, and her face is not fair as it was in youth—sin and sorrow have left on it their traces; the cheek has a bloom not its own, the hair is dashed with grey, the lip is thin, and the brow haggard. The lover turns away; and death comes on, heralded by poverty and neglect; then the child of your heart goes down to the grave unwept, her memory cursed by many whom she led to evil, to disobedience, and to waste. And what think you becomes of the immortal soul, base, polluted, and hardened in its guilt? Deem you that the gates of death will not be to such a one the gates of hell?"