length the evening preceding the bridal-day had arrived, and Ernest and
Sophie had gone to secure Meeta's promise to officiate as bridesmaid in
the simple ceremony of the morrow. They were to be married at the
parsonage, in the presence of a few witnesses only, and were immediately
to set out on an excursion which would occupy several weeks. They had
urged Meeta to accompany them, but she had declined. "But she cannot
refuse to stand up with me--do you think she can?" said Sophie to her
sister, as she prepared to accompany Ernest to Carl Werner's.

"I do not think she _will_ refuse," Mrs. Schwartz replied.

"You do not think she will!" repeated Mr. Schwartz, in an accent of
surprise, to his wife, when Ernest and Sophie had left them. "How does
that consist with your idea of Meeta's love for Ernest?"

"It perfectly consists with a love like Meeta's; a love without any
alloy of selfishness. Dear Meeta! how little is her nobleness
appreciated! Even I dare not let her see that she is understood by me,
lest I should wound her delicate and generous nature."

There was a pause, and then Mr. Schwartz said, hesitatingly, "If it be
as you think, Meeta is a noble being; but----"

"If it be!" interrupted Mrs. Schwartz, with warmth. "Can you doubt it?
Have you not seen the loftier character which her generous purpose has
impressed upon her whole aspect? the elevation--I had almost said the
inspiration, which beams from her face when Ernest and Sophia are
present? Sophie is my sister, and I love her truly; yet I declare to
you, at such times I have looked from her to Meeta, and wondered at what
seemed to me Ernest's infatuation."

"Sophie is fair, and delicate, and accomplished, the very
personification of refinement, natural and acquired, and the antipodes
of all which Ernest, ere he saw her, had begun to dread in the untaught
Meeta of his memory. I am not surprised at all at his loving Sophie, but
I cannot at all understand how the simple and single-hearted Meeta can
feign so long and so well, as on your supposition she has done."

"Feign! Meeta feign! I never said or thought such a thing. A course of
action lofty as Meeta's must have its foundation deep in the heart, in
principles enduring as life itself. Had Meeta's been the commonplace
feigned satisfaction with Ernest's conduct to which pride might have
given birth, she would have been fitful in her moods; alternately gay or
gloomy; generous and kind, or petulant and exac