Little did Wilfer or Miss Lester imagine that Jessica had found safety
and refuge in Adrien Leroy's chambers.
CHAPTER VI
Love is the universal epidemic, effectual in all climes and conditions;
there is no inoculation that will secure exemption from its influence;
only given a warm human heart, and there is the natural susceptibility.
So it is from high to low. The little blind god takes no count of
difference in fortune or rank in life. Dynasties fall, thrones totter to
the ground, crowns tumble to dust on kingly heads; but love rules and
lives on, immortal, triumphant, unconquerable.
Jessica had never heard of Romeo and Juliet, of Faust and Marguerite, or
King Cophetua and the beggar maid. All she knew was that she loved, was
conscious only that for a kind word from the lips of the man who had
befriended her, for a glance from those dark eyes; she would gladly have
given up all the other glories the world could have put before her.
Poor Jessica, how sweet and yet how bitter had been the awakening in
that gilded cabinet. How sweet to find herself there in reality, and not
only in a dream; how bitter to know that she had no right there and that
she must go!
That splendid golden room, with, all the wonderful undreamt-of things,
was not for her.
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