ABSTRACT

If any indifferent person approach us, it either is disagreeable, or at least unimportant; but when it is a person we love, it thrills through the heart, and we are unable to speak or to think. Could she have imagined,a that Lord Glenarvon felt for her, she had been lost. But that was impossible;b and yet his manner; – it was so marked, there could be no doubt. She was inexperienced, we may add, innocent; though no doubt sufficientlyc prepared to become every thing that was the reverse. Yet in a moment she felt her own danger, and resolved to guard against it. How then can so many affirm, when they know that they are loved, that it is a mere harmless friendship! how can they, in palliation of their errors, bring forward the perpetually repeated excuse,d / that they were beguiled! The heart that is chaste and pure will shrink the soonest from the very feeling that would pollute it: – in vain it would attempt to deceive itself: the very moment we love, or are loved, something within us points out the danger: – even when we fly from him, to whom we could attach ourselves, we feel a certain embarrassment – an emotion, which is not to be mistaken; and, in a lover’s looks, are there not a thousand assurances and confessions which no denial of words can affect to disguise?e