The Maid of Maiden Lane

"Because I must do it, father; I cannot help it. I desire to do it."

"I am in a hurry; let us go home."

Filling her eyes with the beauty of the splendid looking youth still standing bareheaded watching her, seeing even such trivial things as his long cloak thrown backward over his shoulder, his white hand holding his lifted hat, and the wind-tossed curls of his handsome head, she turned away with a sigh. The Doctor drove rapidly to Maiden Lane and did not on the way speak a word; and Cornelia was glad of it. That image of her lover standing on the moving ship watching her with his heart in his eyes, filled her whole consciousness. Never would it be possible for her to forget it, or to put any other image in its place. She thanked her good angel for giving her such a comforting memory; it seemed as if the sting had been taken out of her sorrow. Henceforward she was resolved to love without a doubt. She would believe in Joris, no matter what she had seen, or what she had heard. There were places in life to which alas! truth could not come; and this might be one of them. Though all the world blamed her lover, she would excuse him. Her heart might ache, her eyes might weep, but in that aching heart and in those weeping eyes, his splendid image would live in that radiant dimness which makes the unseen face, often more real than the present one.

Doctor Moran divined something of this resolute temper, and it made him silent. He felt that his daughter had come to a place where she had put reason firmly aside, and given her whole assent to the assurances of her intuition. He had no arguments for an antagonism of this kind. What could he say to a soul that presaged a something, and then believed it? His instinctive sagacity told him that silence was now the part of wisdom. But though he took her silently home he was conscious of a great relief. His watch was over.

Now a woman's intuition is like a leopard's spring, it seizes the truth --if it seize it at all--at the first bound; and it was by this unaccountable mental agility Cornelia had arrived at the conviction of her lover's fidelity. At any rate, she felt confident, that if circumstances had compelled him to be false to her, the wrong had been sincerely mourned; and she was able to forgive the offence that was blotted out with tears. She reflected also, that now he was so far away, it would be possible for her to call upon Madame Van Heemskirk, and also upon Madame Jacobus as soon as she returned; but if Hyde had remained in New York, these houses would necessarily be closed to her, for he was a constant visitor at both.