A friend had spent a portion of this time with her, a
schoolmate whose failing health attested the wisdom of the condition
her dying brother had imposed in regard to herself. As the warm
weather approached this friend had returned to her New England
home, and Mollie Ainslie found herself counting the days when she
might also take her flight.
Her work had not grown uninteresting, nor had she lost any of her
zeal for the unfortunate race she had striven to uplift; but her
heart was sick of the terrible isolation that her position forced
upon her. She had never once thought of making companions, in
the ordinary sense, of those for whom she labored. They had been
so entirely foreign to her early life that, while she labored
unremittingly for their advancement and entertained for many of
them the most affectionate regard, there was never any inclination
to that friendly intimacy which would have been sure to arise if
her pupils had been of the same race as herself. She recognized
their right most fully to careful and polite consideration; she
had striven to cultivate among them gentility of deportment; but
she had longed with a hungry yearning for friendly white faces,
and the warm hands and hearts of friendly associates.
Her chief recreation in this impalpable loneliness--this Chillon
of the heart in which she had been bound so long--was in daily
rides upon her horse, Midnight.
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