Page:Female Portrait Gallery.pdf/57

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EFFIE DEANS.
133

and broken-hearted; the cheek is pale—the heart once gave it colour; but it is now as monumental marble; the desperation of the wretched is with her; she replies to the proposal of escape by a refusal, "Better tint life, since tint is guid fame;" yet she trembled before the death which she has staid to meet—she is too young to die. Nothing can be more pathetic than the meeting of the sisters. Can we not fancy how the poor prisoner's heart sank within her, when she heard her sister's step recede, slowly and sadly, day after day, from the pitiless door! What a change from the "Lily of St. Leonard's," shaking down the golden blossom of the broom as some chance branch caught her more golden hair. But the change is, when the "Lily of St. Leonard's," and the pale prisoner of the Tolbooth has become Lady Staunton—the received wit—the admitted beauty—the courted and the flattered. I have heard this transition called unnatural; it is not so. How many are the mysteries of society! I do not agree with Goethe, who says that every man has that hidden in the secret recesses of his bosom, which, if known, would cause his fellow men to turn from him with hatred; on the contrary, I firmly believe that were the workings of the heart known, they would rather win for us favour and affection. It is not so much that our natural impulses are not good, as that we allow temptation to turn them aside; or,