Gertrude blushed; she was sensitive about her name, and, though she went by that of Flint, and did not think much about it, she could not fail to remember, when the question was put to her point-blank, that she had no surname of her own. Emily had tried to find Nan Grant, in order to learn from her something of Gertrude's early history; but Nan had left her old habitation, and for years nothing had been heard of her.
It was the twilight of a sultry September day, and, wearied by excessive heat, Emily sat on the front piazza of her father's house, inhaling a delicious and refreshing breeze. The western sky was still streaked with brilliant lines of red, the lingering effects of a gorgeous sunset, while the moon, now nearly at the full, and triumphing in the close of day and the commencement of her nightly reign, cast her full beams upon Emily's white dress, and gave to the beautiful hand and arm, which, escaping from the draperied sleeve, rested on the side of her rustic arm-chair, the semblance of polished marble. Ten years had passed since Emily was introduced to the reader; and yet, so slight were the changes wrought by time, that she looked little older than on her first meeting Gertrude in Mr. Arnold's church.
She had even then experienced much of the sorrows of life, and learned how to distil from the bitter dregs of suffering a balm for every pain. Even then, that experience, and the blessed knowledge she had gained from it, had both stamped themselves upon her countenance; therefore, time had little power upon her; as she was then so was she now; lovely in her outward appearance, and still more lovely in heart and life. Still a close observer might perceive in her a greater degree of buoyancy of spirit, keenness of interest in what was going on about her, and evident enjoyment of life, and this was due, as Emily acknowledged, to her recent close companionship with one to whom she was bound by the warmest affection, and who, by her sympathy, her constant devotion, her natural appreciation of the entertaining and the ludicrous, and the beautiful and true, and her unsparing efforts to bring her much-loved friend into communion with everything she herself enjoyed, had called into play faculties which blindness had rendered almost dormant, and become, what Uncle True bade her be, eyes to her benefactor.