The lamp burned yet fainter.  Margaret went, and proceeded to trim it.  The virgins that arose must have looked very lovely, trimming their lamps.  It is a deed very fair and womanly —­ the best for a woman —­ to make the lamp burn.  The light shone up in her face, and the hands removing the globe handled it delicately.  He saw that the good hands were very beautiful hands; not small, but admirably shaped, and very pure.  As she replaced the globe, —­

“That man,” she said, “will not trouble her any more.”

“I hope not,” said Hugh; “but you speak confidently:  why?”

“Because she has behaved gloriously.  She has fought and conquered him on his own ground; and she is a free, beautiful, and good creature of God for ever.”

“You delight me,” rejoined Hugh “Another time, perhaps, you will be able to tell me all about it.”

“I hope so.  I think she will not mind my telling you.”

They bade each other good night; and Hugh went away with a strange feeling, which he had never experienced before.  To compare great things with small, it was something like what he had once felt in a dream, in which, digging in his father’s garden, he had found a perfect marble statue, young as life, and yet old as the hills.  To think of the girl he had first seen in the drawing-room at Turriepuffit, idealizing herself into such a creature as that, so grand, and yet so womanly! so lofty, and yet so lovely; so strong, and yet so graceful!

Would that every woman believed in the ideal of herself, and hoped for it as the will of God, not merely as the goal of her own purest ambition!  But even if the lower development of the hope were all she possessed, it would yet be well; for its inevitable failure would soon develope the higher and triumphant hope.

He thought about her till he fell asleep, and dreamed about her till he woke.  Not for a moment, however, did he fancy he was in love with her:  the feeling was different from any he had hitherto recognized as embodying that passion.  It was the recognition and consequent admiration of a beauty which everyone who beheld it must recognize and admire; but mingled, in his case, with old and precious memories, doubly dear now in the increased earnestness of his nature and aspirations, and with a deep personal interest from the fact that, however little, he had yet contributed a portion of the vital food whereby the gracious creature had become what she was.

In the so-called morning he went to Mrs. Elton’s.  Euphra was expecting his visit, and he was shown up into her room, where she was lying on a couch by the fire.  She received him with the warmth of gratitude added to that of friendship.  Her face was pale and thin, but her eyes were brilliant.  She did not appear at first sight to be very ill:  but the depth and reality of her sickness grew upon him.  Behind her couch stood Margaret, like a guardian angel.  Margaret could bear the day, for she belonged to it; and therefore she looked more beautiful still than by the lamp-light.  Euphra held out a pale little hand to Hugh, and before she withdrew it, led Hugh’s towards Margaret.  Their hands joined.  How different to Hugh was the touch of the two hands!  Life, strength, persistency in the one:  languor, feebleness, and fading in the other.