s of Euthymia
than the prospect of an ambitious worldly alliance. The ideals of young
women cost them many and great disappointments, but they save them very
often from those lifelong companionships which accident is constantly
trying to force upon them, in spite of their obvious unfitness. The
higher the ideal, the less likely is the commonplace neighbor who has the
great advantage of easy access, or the boarding-house acquaintance who
can profit by those vacant hours when the least interesting of visitors
is better than absolute loneliness,--the less likely are these
undesirable personages to be endured, pitied, and, if not embraced,
accepted, for want of something better. Euthymia found so much pleasure
in the intellectual companionship of Lurida, and felt her own prudence
and reserve so necessary to that independent young lady, that she had
been contented, so far, with friendship, and thought of love only in an
abstract sort of way. Beneath her abstractions there was a capacity of
loving which might have been inferred from the expression of her
features, the light that shone in her eyes, the tones of her voice, all
of which were full of the language which belongs to susceptible natures.
How many women never say to themselves that they were born to love, until
all at once the discovery opens upon them, as the sense that he was born
a painter is said to have dawned suddenly upon Correggio!

Like all the rest of the village and its visitors, she could not help
thinking a good deal about the young man lying ill amongst strangers. She
was not one of those who had sent him the three-cornered notes or even a
bunch of flowers. She knew that he was receiving abounding tokens of
kindness and sympathy from different quarters, and a certain inward
feeling restrained her from joining in these demonstrations. If he had
been suffering from some deadly and contagious malady she would have
risked her life to help him, without a thought that there was any
wonderful heroism in such self-devotion. Her friend Lurida might have
been capable of the same sacrifice, but it would be after reasoning with
herself as to the obligations which her sense of human rights and duties
laid upon her, and fortifying her courage with the memory of noble deeds
recorded of women in ancient and modern history. With Euthymia the
primary human instincts took precedence of all reasoning or reflection
about them. All her sympathies were excited by the thought of