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One season they lacked: Gabriella's eyes had no winter. Brave spirit! Had nature not inclined her to spring rather than autumn, had she not inherited joyousness and the temperamental gayety of the well-born, she must long ago have failed, broken down. Behind her were generations of fathers and mothers who had laughed heartily all their days.
"Interest is a better word. If I understand aright, the buddings of Gabriella's genius met with an untimely blight." I know not how it was, but I felt in an exceedingly ingenuous mood, and I related this episode in my childish history without reserve. I touched lightly on the championship of Richard Clyde, but I was obliged to introduce it.
Several days before the nurse had left without warning, and Miss Polly sat now, in hat and mantle, on one of the little beds which would be taken down the next day and sent over to the apartment on the West Side. "I've been to the Carolina and unpacked the things that had come," she said at Gabriella's entrance.
Like Jane, she had been a fool, but, unlike Jane, she would not stay a fool always. "You seem so hard, Gabriella," said Mrs. Fowler. "Is it because you are young? Young people never make allowances." The taste of bitterness rose to Gabriella's lips. "I suppose I am hard," she answered, "and I am going to stay so. There is safety in hardness."
It was a pleasant picture for a tired woman to gaze on, and the ruddy glow of the fire was reflected in Gabriella's heart while she enfolded her children. After a day in Madame's hothouse atmosphere, it was delightful to return to this little centre of peace and love, and to feel that its very existence depended upon the work of her brain and hands.
All that could be most luxurious and splendid in Kentucky during those last deep, rich years of the old social order, was Gabriella's: the extravagance, the gayety, the pride, the lovely manners, the selfishness and cruelty in its terrible, unconscious, and narrow way, the false ideals, the aristocratic virtues.
Leaning forward until the light fell on the paper, she read with trembling lips: My Dear Son: Your letter was a blow to me because you had said nothing of Gabriella's plan to bring her mother to New York to live with her, and, of course, this makes it out of the question that you should come straight to us.
The North Wind had bolted about her in vain his whitest snows; and now the woods were turning green. It was merely in keeping with Gabriella's nature, therefore, that as she grew to know the people among whom she had come to stay, their homes, their family histories, one household and one story should have engaged her deep interest: David's parents and David's career.
Make him your son in a twofold sense, for, by the heaven that hears me, I believe you would bless the hour that gave him the right to Gabriella's love." "Father, forgive him, he knows not what he utters," murmured his mother, lifting her joined hands to heaven. I still clung to her in trembling awe, forgetting my own sorrow in the depth and sacredness of hers.
"It is a splendid investment," croaked the old woman in the midst of Gabriella's painful reflections. "The house was never more flourishing." The ruling principle which decreed that Gabriella should keep her temper had disciplined her not less thoroughly in the habit of holding her tongue.
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