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Such machine-like precision warmed the hearts of Democratic politicians. The editor of the People's Advocate declared the integrity of Douglas to be "as unspotted as the vestal's fame as untarnished and as pure as the driven snow."
There was a smell of mortar still in the air, and a faint suggestion that at any moment green grass might appear between the interstices of the red-brick hearth. The room, yielding a little in the point of coldness, seemed to share Miss Nellie's fresh virginity, and, barring the pink parasol, set her off as in a vestal's cell.
The gaps through the Blue Ridge I understand to be about the following distances from Harper's Ferry, to wit: Vestal's, five miles; Gregory's, thirteen; Snicker's, eighteen; Ashby's, twenty-eight; Manassas, thirty-eight; Chester, forty-five; and Thornton's, fifty-three.
They were out in the firmament beyond worlds, not seeing, not hearing, not touching, but knowing and one in knowledge. The veil touched his cheek and lightly pressed against it. It was the Vestal's veil. He had felt it in dreams, between his face and hers. Then the world broke into visible light, and he heard her whisper in his ear. "That was my secret. You know it now."
He saw the golden light on its uncounted acres, the shadow falling at the foot of the great Rockface, the mighty Wall itself with the silver ribbon of the Vestal's Veil falling straight down from the upper rim, the distant town, looking always like a dull gem in a dark setting, and a thrill shot to his heart.
Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently ridden with her in the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head of a confederate for mentioning her name in a barroom. The overdressed mother of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered near this astute Vestal's temple, never daring to enter its sacred precincts, but content to worship the priestess from afar.
"That," said Angelina, "'is the blameless vestal's lot: but you forget that you are to be married, my Araminta; and you forget that, in your letter of three folio sheets, you said not one word to me of this intended marriage."
She had dreamed that the Vestal's vow was broken at last, and that she was sitting alone at night on the steps of the closed Temple, leaning back against the base of a pillar, watching the stars that slowly ascended out of the east; and she was thinking of what she had been, and that she should never again stand within the holy place to feed the sacred fire with the consecrated wood, and sweep the precious ashes into the mysterious pit beneath the altar.
He was thinking of the only man in Corvan whom he had been able to persuade to present Ellen's protest Dick Burtree, one-time lawyer and man of parts in the outside, now a puffed and threadbare vagabond, whose paramount idea was whiskey and more whiskey. But Burtree could talk. Over his mottled and shapeless lips could, on occasion, pour a stream of pure oratory silver as the Vestal's Veil.
How much dearer to me wert thou than the diadem of an empress, a vestal's fillet, the ropes of pearls twined among the jetty locks of Venice's loveliest patricians, or the richest head-dress of antique or modern art! Ah, but Madame Taverneau was handsome!
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