Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/103

 weary heart pines away in its self-consuming, and the young idealist is soon borne to an early grave, leaving us to ask what must poor Guido have done without his sister's watchful care and soothing tenderness? Francesca is really more unhappy, and with more cause, than Guido, but not, like him, does she yield to grief's self-indulgence, or to mere imagination's morbid dreams. She thinks, she plans, she acts, she endures for both. Neither prosperous nor afflictive circumstances, admiration nor neglect, disappointment nor hope fulfilled, ever tempt her to swerve from her noble principles, or to deviate from the right line of conduct they have prescribed. There is but one sacrifice which she as a woman can lay on the altar of duty,—her own deep feelings,—and cheerfully, constantly, is that offering yielded. When an almost friendless orphan in Italy, a noble and generous Englishman gains her affections; not to be his beloved and prosperous bride, will she desert the poor old grandfather who has protected her childhood; and the lovers plight their vows only to seal love's bitter parting. Time passes on, and she meets Evelyn again at the gay court of France, but changed, alas! into a dissolute and reckless cavalier: her feelings change; how can she love what is unworthy? Still she considers her engagement binding, till accident reveals to her his utter worthlessness, and she overhears him expressing a wish to one of his companions that he were really free from her. "She confronts him with a perfect simplicity, a clear purity, a frankness that no art could have assumed; her face, pale as death, for her emotion was far too strong for confusion; her lip curled with unutterable scorn; her large dark eyes seemed filled with light, while her recreant lover cowered beneath