"While your decision is very painful to me, I shall not attempt to dissuade you from a resolution which I know has not been lightly or hastily taken. But, ah, my child! what shall I do without you?"
Mr. Hammond's eyes filled with tears as he looked at his pupil, and his hand trembled when he stroked her bowed head.
"I dread the separation from you and Mrs. Murray; but I know I ought to go; and I feel that when duty commands me to follow a path, lonely and dreary though it may seem, a light will be shed before my feet, and a staff will be put into my hands. I have often wondered what the Etrurians intended to personify in their Dii Involuti, before whose awful decrees all other gods bowed. Now I feel assured that the chief of the 'Shrouded Gods' is Duty, veiling her features with a silver-lined cloud, scorning to parley, but whose unbending figure signs our way--an unerring pillar of cloud by day, of fire by night. Mr. Hammond, I shall follow that stern finger till the clods on my coffin shut it from my sight."
The August sun shining through the lilac and myrtle boughs that rustled close to the study-window glinted over the pure, pale face of the orphan, and showed a calm mournfulness in the eyes which looked out at the quiet parsonage garden, and far away to the waving lines against the sky, where-"A golden lustre slept upon the hills."
Just beyond the low, ivy-wreathed stone wall that marked the boundary of the garden ran a little stream, overhung with alders and willows, under whose tremendous shadows rested contented cattle-- some knee-deep in water, some browsing leisurely on purple-tufted clover. From the wide, hot field, stretching away on the opposite side, came the clear metallic ring of the scythes, as the mowers sharpened them; the mellow whistle of the driver lying on top of the huge hay mass, beneath which the oxen crawled toward the lowered bars; and the sweet gurgling laughter of two romping, sunburned children, who swung on at the back of the wagon.
Edna pointed to the peaceful picture, and said: "If Rosa Bonheur could only put that on canvas for me, I would hang it upon my walls in the great city whither I am going; and when my weary days of work ended, I could sit down before it, and fold my tired hands and look at it through the mist of tears till its blessed calm stole into my heart, and I believed myself once more with you, gazing out of the study-window. Ah! blessed among all gifted women is Rosa Bonheur! accounted worthy to wear what other women may not aspire to--the Cross of the Legion of Honor! Yesterday when I read the description of the visit of the Empress to the studio, I think I was almost as proud and happy as that patient worker at the easel, when over her shoulders was hung the ribbon which France decrees only to the mighty souls who increase her glory, and before whom she bows in reverent gratitude. I am glad that a woman's hand laid that badge of immortality on womanly shoulders--a crowned head crowning the Queen of Artists. I wonder if, when obscure and in disguise, she haunted the abattoir du Roule, and worked on amid the lowing and bleating of the victims--I wonder if faith prophesied of that distant day of glorious recompense, when the ribbon of the Legion fluttered from Eugenie's white fingers and she was exalted above all thrones? Ah, Mr. Hammond! we all wear our crosses, but they do not belong to the order of the Legion of Honor."