Godey's Lady's Book And Magazine 1866-06: Vol 72

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GODEY’S Hairy s Book and AMlagasine PHILADELPHIA, JUNE, 1866. RIZPAH’S IDOLS. BY MARION HARLAND, “To make your ido!s, and to find them clay.” [Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by Louis A. Gopery, in the clerk’s office of the District Corrt of the United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. } (Continued from page 409.) CHAPTER VI. Tue amber aad purple light of a mountain sunset shone through curtains of coarse, but clean muslin, into the simply-furnished cham- ber of a Swiss lodging-house, bathing, in chastened lustre, a rustic sofa, on which a young girl lay sleeping. Eight months had already been spent by the Lowries in their foreign tour. For ten weeks they had occupied their present quar- ters—not from choice,* although the accom- modations were far more to their taste than the ostentatious ‘‘apartments’’ and fare of many a grand ‘‘ hotel’’ they had visited dur- ing their travels. Mr. and Mrs. Lowrie es- teemed that a benignant Providence that had guided them to this neat and secluded auberge, upon the day preceding the premouitory at- tack of giddiness and nausea that had ushered in Rizpah’s tedious spell of fever. She was convalescent now; able, at noon, to drive slowly along the mountain passes, or, leaning upon her father’s arm, to walk feebly abroad and draw in fresh relays of strength with the spicy breezes wafted downwards from the evergreen groves, clothing the summer slopes of the heights that had sheltered the little valiey from the more cruel storms of winter; able, also, to read the books she had been permitted to see only in the hands of others, while her illness chained her to the pillow; and, as she persisted in averring, able to re- sume the pen laid aside so reluctantly when fever and weakness robbed the brain of cohe- rent thought and the fingers of nerve. But there were vestiges of deeper and dead- lier blight than any bodily disorder in the face, so youthful, yet so worn in its wanness, that now rested upon the cushions of the rude lounge. Physical suffering had not drawn the furrows between the brows that, even in sleep, were, now and then, spasmodically con- tracted, or left those weary, drooping curves at the corners of the mouth. Mental unrest was so legibly inscribed upon her countenance that the blessed wand of slumber could not smooth out or obliterate the lines. Yet she slept profoundly, if not peacefully, for she gave no sign of awakening when the door opened and her step-mother entered ; did not stir when the intruder approached the sofa, and stood gazing down upon her. The elder lady was tall, and, as Rizpah had described her to Ada, of noble and graceful presence ; but words, written or spoken, would have failed to give to a stranger a just impres- sion of that which constituted the peculiar charm of her carriage and physiognomy; the indefinable, yet irresistibly attractive air of pensive benignity that breathed of heavy, soul-crushing trials meekly borne, griefs, gathered like the sheaves of a plenteous har- 493