Morton was taken by surprise; and, as he struggled to frame an answer, his features betrayed an emotion which he could not hide. Fanny Euston hastened to relieve his embarrassment, and assuage, as far as she could, the tumult she had called up.
"With whatever fate you may have had to battle, your wounds are in the front,--all honorable scars. Your desperation is past;--it was only for the hour;--and for the other extreme, it is not in you to suffer that."
"Idle dreaming;--melancholy;--weak pining at disappointment."
"No, thank God, it is not in me to lie and whine like a sick child."
"You are the firmer for what you have passed. Manhood, the proudest of all possession to a man, is strengthened and deepened in you."
"What do you call this manhood, which you seem to hold in such high account?"
"That unflinching quality which, strong in generous thought and high purpose, bears onward towards its goal, knowing no fear but the fear of God; wise, prudent, calm, yet daring and hoping all things; not dismayed by reverses, nor elated by success; never bending nor receding; wearying out ill fortune by undespairing constancy; unconquered by pain or sorrow, or deferred hope; fiery in attack, steadfast in resistance, unshaken in the front of death; and when courage is vain, and hope seems folly, when crushing calamity presses it to the earth, and the exhausted body will no longer obey the still undaunted mind, then putting forth its hardest, saddest heroism, the unlaurelled heroism of endurance, patiently biding its time."
"Then dying at its post, like the Roman sentinel at Pompeii."
Her words struck a chord in Morton's nature, and roused his early enthusiasm, dormant for years.
"Fanny," he said, "I thank you. You give me back my youth. An hour ago, the world was as dull to me as a November day; but you have brought June back again. You would make a coward valiant, and breathe life into a dead man."
Miss Euston seemed, for a moment, in embarrassment what to reply; indeed, she showed some signs of discomposure, contrasting with her former frankness. They were still in the recess of the window. She was visible to those in the room; while he, standing opposite, was hidden by a curtain. At this moment, a gentleman, with a slight limp in his gait, approaching quickly, accosted Miss Euston, smiling with an air of the most earnest affability. She looked up to reply, but, as she did so, her eyes were arrested by a sudden change in the features of her companion, who was bending on the new comer a look so fierce and threatening, that she scarcely repressed an ejaculation of surprise. Mr. Horace Vinal followed the direction of her gaze, and saw himself face to face with the victim of his villany. He started as if he had found a grizzly bear behind the curtain. The smile vanished from his lips, the color from his cheeks, and he hastily drew back, and mingled with the crowd.