Mrs. Sandford did
not exhort, nor even advise; least of all did she allude to her
sister-in-law. Hers was only the influence of truth,--of broad ideas of
life and its noblest ends, presented with simplicity and a womanly tact
above all art. It seemed to Greenleaf the voice of an angel that he
heard, so promptly did his conscience respond. He listened with
heightening color and tense nerves; the delirious languor of amatory
music, and the delirium he had felt while under the spell of Marcia's
beauty, passed away. It seemed to him that he was lifted into a higher
plane, whence he saw before him the straight path of duty, leading away
from the tempting gardens of pleasure,--where he recognized immutable
principles, and became conscious that his true affinities were not with
those who came in contact only with his sensuous nature. He had never
understood himself until now.
A long meditation, the reader thinks; but, in reality, it was only an
electric current, awakening a series of related thoughts; as a flash of
lightning at night illumines at once a crowd of objects in a landscape,
which the mind perceives, but cannot follow in detail.
When, at length, Greenleaf looked up, he was astonished to find the
room silent, and himself with his companion in the focus of all eyes.
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