Brought up among such advantages, it
was only natural to suppose that Florence would show a proper
appreciation of them by doing her duty in that state of life unto
which it had pleased God to call her--in other words, by
marrying, after a fitting number of dances and dinner-parties, an
eligible gentleman, and living happily ever afterwards. Her
sister, her cousins, all the young ladies of her acquaintance,
were either getting ready to do this or had already done it.
It was inconceivable that Florence should dream of anything else;
yet dream she did. Ah! To do her duty in that state of life unto
which it had pleased God to call her! Assuredly, she would not be
behindhand in doing her duty; but unto what state of life HAD it
pleased God to call her? That was the question. God's calls are
many, and they are strange. Unto what state of life had it
pleased Him to call Charlotte Corday, or Elizabeth of Hungary?
What was that secret voice in her ear, if it was not a call? Why
had she felt, from her earliest years, those mysterious
promptings towards... she hardly knew what, but certainly towards
something very different from anything around her? Why, as a
child in the nursery, when her sister had shown a healthy
pleasure in tearing her dolls to pieces, had SHE shown an almost
morbid one in sewing them up again? Why was she driven now to
minister to the poor in their cottages, to watch by sick-beds, to
put her dog's wounded paw into elaborate splints as if it was a
human being? Why was her head filled with queer imaginations of
the country house at Embley turned, by some enchantment, into a
hospital, with herself as matron moving about among the beds? Why
was even her vision of heaven itself filled with suffering
patients to whom she was being useful? So she dreamed and
wondered, and, taking out her diary, she poured into it the
agitations of her soul.
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