they come not: it is late. he is already telling all! she relapses into her sweet reverie. her thought fixes on no subject; her mind is intent on no idea; her soul is melted into dreamy delight; her only consciousness is perfect bliss! sweet sounds still echo in her ear, and still her pure pulse beats, from the first embrace of passion.
the door opens, and her father enters, leaning upon the arm of her beloved. yes, he has told all! mr. dacre approached, and, bending down, pressed the lips of his child. it was the seal to their plighted faith, and told, without speech, that the blessing of a parent mingled with the vows of a lover! no other intimation was at present necessary;’ but she, the daughter, thought now only of her father, that friend of her long life, whose love had ne’er been wanting: was she about to leave him? she arose, she threw her arms around his neck and wept.
the young duke walked away, that his presence might not control the full expression of her hallowed soul. ‘this jewel is mine,’ was his thought; ‘what, what have i done to be so blessed?’
in a few minutes he again joined them, and was seated by her side; and mr. dacre considerately remembered that he wished to see his steward, and they were left alone. their eyes meet, and their soft looks tell that they were thinking of each other. his arm steals round the back of her chair, and with his other hand he gently captures hers.
first love, first love! how many a glowing bard has sung thy beauties! how many a poor devil of a prosing novelist, like myself, has echoed all our superiors, the poets, teach us! no doubt, thou rosy god of young desire, thou art a most bewitching little demon; and yet, for my part, give me last love.
ask a man which turned out best, the first horse he bought, or the one he now canters on? ask — but in short there is nothing in which knowledge is more important and experience more valuable than in love. when we first love, we are enamoured of our own imaginations. our thoughts are high, our feelings rise from out the deepest caves of the tumultuous tide of our full life. we look around for one to share our exquisite existence, and sanctify the beauties of our being.
but those beauties are only in our thoughts. we feel like heroes, when we are but boys. yet our mistress must bear a relation, not to ourselves, but to our imagination. she must be a real heroine, while our perfection is but ideal. and the quick and dangerous fancy of our race will, at first, rise to the pitch. she is all we can conceive. mild and pure as youthful priests, we bow down before our altar. but the idol to which we breathe our warm and gushing vows, and bend our eager knees, all its power, does it not exist only in our idea; all its beauty, is it not the creation of our excited fancy? and then the sweetest of superstitions ends. the long delusion bursts, and we are left like men upon a heath when fairies vanish; cold and dreary, gloomy, bitter, harsh, existence seems a blunder.
but just when we are most miserable, and curse the poet’s cunning and our own conceits, there lights upon our path, just like a ray fresh from the sun, some sparkling child of light, that makes us think we are premature, at least, in our resolves. yet we are determined not to be taken in, and try her well in all the points in which the others failed. one by one, her charms steal on our warming soul, as, one by one, those of the other beauty sadly stole away, and then we bless our stars, and feel quite sure that we have found perfection in a petticoat.
but our duke — where are we? he had read woman thoroughly, and consequently knew how to value the virgin pages on which his thoughts now fixed. he and may dacre wandered in the woods, and nature seemed to them more beautiful from their beautiful loves. they gazed upon the sky; a brighter light fell o’er the luminous earth. sweeter to them the fragrance of the sweetest flowers, and a more balmy breath brought on the universal promise of the opening year.
they wandered in the woods, and there they breathed their mutual adoration. she to him was all in all, and he to her was like a new divinity. she poured forth all that she long had felt, and scarcely could suppress. from the moment he tore her from the insulter’s arms, his image fixed in her heart, and the struggle which she experienced to repel his renewed vows was great indeed. when she heard of his misfortunes, she had wept; but it was the strange delight she experienced when his letter arrived to her father that first convinced her how irrevocably her mind was his.
and now she does not cease to blame herself for all her past obduracy; now she will not for a moment yield that he could have been ever anything but all that was pure, and beautiful, and good.
