It is some
days after your return: you are strolling down a quiet, wooded lane,--a
remembered place,--when you first open to her your heart. Your talk is
of Laura Dalton. You describe her to Nelly with the extravagance of a
glowing hope. You picture those qualities that have attracted you most;
you dwell upon her beauty, her elegant figure, her grace of
conversation, her accomplishments. You make a study that feeds your
passion as you go on. You rise by the very glow of your speech into a
frenzy of feeling that she has never excited before. You are quite sure
that you would be wretched and miserable without her.
"Do you mean to marry her?" says Nelly.
It is a question that gives a swift bound to the blood of youth. It
involves the idea of possession, and of the dependence of the cherished
one upon your own arm and strength. But the admiration you entertain
seems almost too lofty for this; Nelly's question makes you diffident of
reply; and you lose yourself in a new story of those excellencies of
speech and of figure which have so charmed you.
Nelly's eye on a sudden becomes full of tears.
----"What is it, Nelly?"
"Our mother, Clarence.
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