University of Virginia Library

EXTRACT FROM ROSE TO FRANK.

Mr. Evelyn has come! The effect I am sure was not small
on Margaret. The night before she did not sleep a wink, for
she kept me awake till morning. Pa and Ma, as I call her
father and mother, were for fixing up a little, but she would
allow of no changes. She half smiled and half cried by
turns; her face went through all the variations of the prism.
Mr. Evelyn had forwarded a kind note, saying he would like
to see her alone. She took me with her down the Delectable
Way to an old haunt of her's, where she first encountered
him. I would have withdrawn, but she held me fast. We
heard his horse coming up the hill. “This is a strange feeling,”
said she; “is this what you mean by love, Rose?” She
never looked more beautiful. Her heron's wreath set off her
rich dark curls, she wore a simple muslin, her expression
might have ravished an angel. Mr. Evelyn left his horse and
came forward. Hardly could she articulate my name in the
introduction. By an instantaneous and almost invisible act,
their hearts, so long one, sealed the unison. I had anticipated
something, but I was excited and enchanted. Margaret has

fair, womanly proportions, Mr. Evelyn is tall, and of so noble
a carriage;—to see them in that pure embrace, and with such
an interpenetration of soul and spirit, quite overpowered me.
Deacon Ramsdill came limping along with one of his queerest
of all smiles — “Sheer nater, just so when I was a youngster,”
said he, and so diverted us from a fit of crying into
which I am sure I should have fallen. Mr. Evelyn was then
introduced to Pa, Ma, and Hash. He made inquiries after
Chilion, which we could only answer by our tears.

We have sometimes wondered that he never wrote Margaret,
but he says his letters were lost on the way. She
showed him some autumnal leaves and flowers she gathered,
and has kept in remembrance of him. These were her letters
to him, dumb signals, that she preserved in the garret! She
has loved him, I do insist; but that lively pain of love we
girls are so wont to indulge, perhaps she has not felt. This
may be partly owing, such is my solution, to the strange,
rapid, distressing scenes she has been through since she first
saw him.

Mr. Evelyn has taken the spare room at Aunt Wright's.
There is a cause for sorrow in that family, which, I fear, will
not soon be removed. Aunt has long had her heart set on
Margaret for cousin Obed. This interest did not abate on
Margaret's accession to fortune. Though I believe Obed had
if not his hopes damped, at least his ideas of things very much
chastened by his trip abroad. The world is so large, and there
are so many men in it, I think he had relinquished whatever
thoughts he may have entertained of Margaret. In addition,
her connection with Chilion has of late inspired him with a
secret dread of her. But none of these things availed with
his mother, who has rendered herself positively annoying by
urging the fulfilment of certain promises she says Margaret
made in years gone by. However, the matter is settled now,
and Aunt freely consented to admit to her house the rival of
her son, when she found there was prospect of an handsome
remuneration.