How different
then, too, was her position from her present, and how happy! The only
sister of a devoted brother, the lord and conqueror of Asia, the bride
of his most victorious captain, one worthy of all her virtues, and whose
youthful valour had encircled her brow with a diadem. To Miriam, exalted
station had brought neither cares nor crimes. It had, as it were, only
rendered her charity universal, and her benevolence omnipotent. She
could not accuse herself, this blessed woman--she could not accuse
herself, even in this searching hour of self-knowledge--she could not
accuse herself, with all her meekness, and modesty, and humility, of
having for a moment forgotten her dependence on her God, or her duty to
her neighbour.
But when her thoughts recurred to that being from whom they were indeed
scarcely ever absent; and when she remembered him, and all his life,
and all the thousand incidents of his youth, mysteries to the world, and
known only to her, but which were indeed the prescience of his fame, and
thought of all his surpassing qualities and all his sweet affection,
his unrivalled glory and his impending fate, the tears, in silent agony,
forced their way down her pale and pensive cheek.
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