"Be in no hurry to do so, Paulina. Leave the revelation to Time and
your kind Fate. I also have noticed the gentleness of her cares for
you: doubt not she will benignantly order the circumstances, and fitly
appoint the hour. Yes: I have thought over your life just as you have
yourself thought it over; I have made comparisons like those to which
you adverted. We know not the future, but the past has been
propitious.
"As a child I feared for you; nothing that has life was ever more
susceptible than your nature in infancy: under harshness or neglect,
neither your outward nor your inward self would have ripened to what
they now are. Much pain, much fear, much struggle, would have troubled
the very lines of your features, broken their regularity, would have
harassed your nerves into the fever of habitual irritation you would
have lost in health and cheerfulness, in grace and sweetness.
Providence has protected and cultured you, not only for your own sake,
but I believe for Graham's. His star, too, was fortunate: to develop
fully the best of his nature, a companion like you was needed: there
you are, ready. You must be united. I knew it the first day I saw you
together at La Terrasse. In all that mutually concerns you and Graham
there seems to me promise, plan, harmony. I do not think the sunny
youth of either will prove the forerunner of stormy age. I think it is
deemed good that you two should live in peace and be happy--not as
angels, but as few are happy amongst mortals. Some lives _are_
thus blessed: it is God's will: it is the attesting trace and
lingering evidence of Eden. Other lives run from the first another
course. Other travellers encounter weather fitful and gusty, wild and
variable--breast adverse winds, are belated and overtaken by the early
closing winter night. Neither can this happen without the sanction of
God; and I know that, amidst His boundless works, is somewhere stored
the secret of this last fate's justice: I know that His treasures
contain the proof as the promise of its mercy."
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