United States or Falkland Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She knew that the lot had been resorted to, and that the letters had been written to Elise and Albert which acquainted them with the result; and the peace of her prayerful soul was rent by the thought that a joyless surrender of human will to a higher was, perhaps, no better than the poor helpless slave's extorted sacrifice. The happiness of the household seemed to Benigna in her keeping.
Do not you remember my children, that I once nearly betrayed the secret of her existence to you? Benigna is, as she says, an excellent fairy, but terribly strict in her notions. She was the friend and guardian of my dear lady from her infancy; but your father could not endure what he called her severity, or forgive her opposition to his marriage with your mother.
Benigna, upon her recovery from a dangerous illness, thus expressed herself: "I think that it pleased the Lord to afflict so many in our house with illness, and to restore them again, that he might prove us, to know whether we could place all our hopes in him, even in perplexity and pain; and I have now found that he is able, not only to bring us safe through the most distressing circumstances, but to establish us more and more in full reliance upon his help alone.
Sister Benigna," he continued in a different tone, and a voice not quite under his control, "is it not unreasonable to have passed a sleepless night thinking of Albert and Elise?" "Very unreasonable." But he had not charged her, as she supposed, with that folly, as his next words showed. "It is, and yet I have done it only because all this might have been so easily avoided."
He sat looking at Leonhard opposite to him, who had already taken a note-book and pencil from his pocket, and, planting his left foot firmly against one of the great rocks of the cliff, he said, "Loretz tells me you stayed all night at his house." "Yes, he invited me in when I inquired my way to the inn." "Sister Benigna was there?"
The vaunted favorite of Felicia found herself no higher in the esteem of Benigna than her indiscreet cousins, and felt ready to sink under her reproving eye; but, resuming her benevolent aspect, the fairy continuing her discourse, said, "take courage, my children, you are none of you irreclaimable, and may hope, by your future conduct, to make some amends for past transgressions.
As they walked down the hill again, he startled his companion by a merry outbreak. "Tell me you are not mine!" he said: "there never was a joke like it!" On her return home Elise found Sister Benigna seated at the piano, attuning herself, as she said, after her work among the restive children of her school.
Leonhard had said ungrateful things about his prize-credentials to Miss Marion Ayres, and I do believe that these very prizes, awarded for his various drawings, were never so valued by him as the look with which priestly Benigna seemed to admit him at least so far as into the fellowship of the Gentiles' Court.
Sister Benigna said to her companion, "It is time we practiced before an audience perhaps;" and they went on as if nothing had happened. And sitting in that cool room on the eve of a scorching and distracted day, is it any wonder that Leonhard composed himself to accept any marvel that might present itself?
And as if she would not prolong an interview which must be full of pain, because no light could proceed from any words that would be given them to speak, Sister Benigna turned abruptly toward the basement door when she had said this, and entered it without bestowing a parting glance even on the minister.
Word Of The Day