Alas! If we could go back with them to their homes, and sit
beside them, unseen, in their lonely hours, would not pity fill our
hearts? My dear young friend! Turn your feet aside from this way--it
is the path that leads to unutterable wretchedness."
The earnestness of my manner added force to what I said, and
constrained at least a momentary conviction.
"You speak strongly, Doctor," she said, with the air of one who
could not look aside from an unpleasant truth.
"Not too strongly, Delia. Is it not as I have said? Are not your
mere society-ladies too often miserable at home?"
She sighed heavily, as if unpleasant images were forcing themselves
upon her mind. I felt that I might follow up the impression I had
made, and resumed:
There was a time, Delia--and it lies only three or four short years
backward on your path of life--when I read in your opening mind a
promise of higher things than have yet been attained--you must
pardon the freedom of an old but true friend. A time when thought,
taste, feeling were all building for themselves a habitation, the
stones whereof were truths, and the decorations within and without
pure and good affections.
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