CHAPTER XVIII

MAIDEN NO MORE

It was late mid-summer, and just such an evening as had seen the
attempted capture of Jessica Leveret years before. She sat at a window,
looking out upon the garden and the river. The room was at the top of
the house. It had been to her a kind of play-room when she had visited
Governor Nicholls years before. To every woman memory is a kind of
religion; and to Jessica as much as to any, perhaps more than to most,
for she had imagination. She half sat, half knelt, her elbow on her
knee, her soft cheek resting upon her firm, delicate hand. Her beauty
was as fresh and sweet as on the day we first saw her. More, something
deep and rich had entered into it. Her eyes had got that fine
steadfastness which only deep tenderness and pride can give a woman: she
had lived. She was smiling now, yet she was not merry; her brightness
was the sunshine of a nature touched with an Arcadian simplicity. Such
an one could not be wholly unhappy. Being made for others more than for
herself, she had something of the divine gift of self-forgetfulness.

As she sat there, her eyes ever watching the river as though for some one
she expected, there came from the garden beneath the sound of singing.
It was not loud, but deep and strong:

"As the wave to the shore, as the dew to the leaf,
As the breeze to the flower,
As the scent of a rose to the heart of a child, 343
As the rain to the dusty land--
My heart goeth out unto Thee--unto Thee!