CHAPTER X. CONNECTING LINK BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT. "To love is to live, to live is to work, to work is to enjoy, and so again to work and to live will be to love in proportionate fulness and perfection Him who is Love." M ORE than six years have passed since the events narrated in the last chapter. Daisy is now eighteen, "a very lovely girl" some call her, while others prefer Linda's style of beauty, and say that in her cousin's presence Daisy Snowflake is "nothing extraordinary." Any way, these two girls get a very large share of admiration; but while Linda thoroughly appreciates her own popularity, Daisy appears altogether unconscious of the fact that more notice is taken of her now than in the school-room days, when as the Rector's orphan niece she always came in for her share of attention. Linda's character resembles her style of beauty in being lively, vivacious, sparkling. She is always full of fun, making great merriment for her young companions, and winning the unqualified admiration of the old. She has had her first offer. She declared herself desperately in love with the gentleman's eyes, and allowed that she encouraged his attentions just to see how far he could fall in love with her without breaking his heart. Alas, poor Linda! that she could sport with feelings so solemn. But when he asked her father's permission to speak to her, Linda's mood changed, and she pretended to be very indignant that a man fifteen years her senior should presume to fall in love with her! She begged her father to tell him that when she married she should choose some one a few years younger than herself, and that would not be at present, as she certainly intended to remain single until she was eighty! Of course the gentleman in question never received the message; but he went abroad as soon as he could quite realise that Linda was not likely to change her mind, and married his cousin six months later. Daisy had always appeared more or less sedate by the side of her high-spirited cousin, and now the contrast was more striking than ever. Daisy was invited out quite as much as Linda, but she seldom accepted all her invitations, much to the discomfiture of good Miss Humphreys, who acted in society as a sort of duenna to the two girls, Mrs. Brown very rarely going out. What Linda was in the homes of the rich, Daisy was in the homes of the poor. There was scarcely a cottage in the parish where she was not known and loved. Her beaming face and hopeful words came often as the sunshine to disperse some cloud of sorrow which had gathered about the lives of the thoughtless. Daisy's bright influence was not the exuberance of human joy, but the conscious sympathy of a heart in which lived the Divine life. Daisy's religious impressions of six years ago, when she felt at those sea-side services during Mr. Coultonsby's addresses the reality of spiritual life, had been deepened considerably. She had now an experience to fall back upon, rich in much which before had been but a grand hope, a shadowy |