Straight Forward by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

ABOUT half past eleven o'clock, when all was quiet in the house, Delia and Emily slipped on their frocks and cloaks, and taking a pitcher, to serve as an excuse if they happened to be caught, they stole quietly down stairs, and out at the school-room door into the garden. The moon was full, and shone with extraordinary brilliancy.

Not a sound was to be heard except the babble of the brook, and the distant barking of a dog; not a mouse seemed to stir in all the long range of buildings belonging to the Seminary, yet Emily felt strangely timid, as setting her pitcher on the well, she walked with Delia down one of the long alleys. She could not help peeping uneasily into every shadowy nook by the side of the path. The evergreen shrubs took strange and suspicious shapes; there were unaccountable rustlings in the hedges, and their footsteps echoed so strangely upon the flags that she could not help glancing behind her more than once, under the impression that they were followed by something.

Delia did not seem inclined for conversation, so that Emily had full leisure to work herself up to the highest state of excitement, and she nearly screamed aloud when the tall cloaked figure of a man rose abruptly from behind the group of arbor vite bushes, which shaded a rustic garden seat near the end of the long alley.

Delia grasped her arm hard.

"Hush, you little fool! Don't you see that it is Mr. Hugo?"

"Apparently Miss Emily is timid," remarked Mr. Hugo, seeming by no means pleased at seeing her. "I think, Delia, you would have been much wiser to have left her behind. She has clearly no taste for adventure."

"I did not wish to come without a companion," replied Delia. "Emily is in my confidence, and I have no reason to distrust her."

Mr. Hugo did not seem quite satisfied, and murmured something which was lost in his overhanging moustache. He then gave his arm to Delia, and they walked away together, leaving Emily struck dumb with consternation and shame.

To what a transaction had she made herself a party? It was clearly no accidental meeting. Delia had contrived the whole affair before hand, and it was doubtless her failure to meet her engagement of the evening before, which had put Mr. Hugo so out of temper in the morning. If she had guessed at the object of this stolen expedition, she thought she would have refused, at all hazards, to have any participation in the matter. And yet, what good would that have done? Delia would have come alone, which would have been much worse, and she might have precipitated her own disgrace.

She looked anxiously after the promenaders, and felt much relieved to see that they had reached the limit of the walk and turned back, for at first she had been in dread of an actual elopement.

She walked up and down uneasily for a while, and then sat down on the garden seat-that very seat where she had once been accustomed to come on Sunday afternoons to read her Bible, and tried to enjoy the prospect. There was the village spread out before her, with its peaceful homes sleeping in the moonlight, its graceful spires and towers pointing the way to heaven-nearer lay the still more peaceful city of the dead, the grave-stones and monuments glistening in the moonlight, and, conspicuous among them the tall white marble pillar, surmounted by a cross, which marked that portion of the ground appropriated to the Seminary. Far away stretched the lake, blue and beautiful, closed in by high hills, which might almost be called mountains.

But "all these things pleased not her eye," for it is only to the pure heart and tranquil spirit that great nature unveils her fair and awful beauty, and neither of these were Emily's. The wonderful creation might as well have been a blank for all her enjoyment of its glories, and the holy quiet of the hour brought her no peace, for there is no peace, saith God, to the wicked.

For a long, long hour, she sat in the arbor, or walked backward and forward upon the stones, shivering with the cold, terrified at every rustle of the branches, and wondering when the conference would be finished. At last, to her great delight, the pair separated. Mr. Hugo departed, and was heard softly to close the garden gate, and Delia returned to her companion, with something in her hand, which she slipped hastily into her pocket.

"You poor child! " said she, kissing Emily. "What a stupid time you have had here by yourself. It was too bad to serve you so, but I did not see how to help it, for come I must, and I dared not come alone."

"If I had had any idea of your object," Emily began, but Delia interrupted her-

"Do you mean to say that you really had no idea? Did you think I was going to take all that trouble only for the sake of a walk? Oh, Emily, what a little goose you are!"

"But how dare you do such a thing? If Mrs. Pomeroy should find you out-"

"Nothing venture, nothing have," said Delia. "Besides, I don't mean that she shall find me out. I wish I were as sure of another person as I am of her."

"Who do you mean?"

"Mr. Fletcher! I do fear that man in spite of myself. He never turns his eyes upon me, but I feel as though he could read me through and through. I wish he were a thousand miles off. Mr. Hugo fears him as much as I do, and hates him, too; I believe he would kill him, if he dared."