in my guardianship, of her property, at the same moment that fate had robbed her of her natural protectors, and of thus turning her forth pennyless, to seek the means of a wretched subsistence ! These, it will be said, are but wild and air-drawn pictures. I had passed through the world with an unimpeached reputation the integrity and liberality of my transactions were known to every one that had heard of my name; no creature would ever dream of suspecting me of so flagitious an action. Be it so. A man is diversely viewed by the variously circumstanced inhabitants, of the globe. Milton is known to one man merely as the Latin translator to a sccretary of state; and the nurse of La Fontaine interrupted his confessor, who was setting before him on his death-bed the terrors of another world, with the exclamation, "For Christ's sake, do not disturb the poor wretch; he is less knave N 2 knave than fool; God can never have the heart to damn him." Such was my temper, that I could not sieep tranquilly upon my pillow, while I thought it pos sible that a native of Genoa or Peru should regard me as a villain, pampering my own follies and depraved propensities with the purloined property of another. CHAP CHAPTER XIX. LET me not be misunderstood. Let it not be supposed that the passion and determination of my mind in favour of this charming girl were less fervent than they ever had been. On the contrary she became every hour more interesting to me. While she sat like Niobe, her whole soul dissolved in tears for the untimely destruction of her family, it was impossible not to feel in its utmost energy the wish, Might I be your comforter! In proportion as she gained the power of attending in some degree to the objects before her, her intercourse gave me nameless emotions. There was a gentle sweetness in her manner, that I never saw in any other human creature. I remembered her gay and active and spirit ed; ed; it was now a faint and undefined image of these qualities that presented itself, a sun that yielded an uncertain beam, amidst the mass of clouds that sought to overwhelm it. That transpa rent complexion, that countenance in which, like a book, the spectator might read every emotion and temporary impulse of the soul, rendered every state of mind of the angelic creature to whom it. belonged interesting. When the first faint smile, after the death of her father, illumined her features, it struck me like a resurrection from the dead: my sensa tions were such as those which Admetus must have felt, when Hercules brought back to him his heroic consort from the regions of Pluto. There was something too aerial, too subtle, too heavenly in her countenance, to be properly the attribute of a terrestrial being. The glories of Elysium seemed to hang round her. Poor Mary had nothing on earth earth left her to love, but me; and she felt toward me as toward father, mother, sisters in onc. Nothing could be so delicate and flattering to me, as the whole of her demeanour and every demonstration of this sort had a double price, as it appeared a gentle and voluntary and cheerful restraint upon the state of ber mind, so much taken away from the dead to give to the living. Thus we passed the winter. The cheerful blaze of our quiet hearth compensated for the driving hail and snow which raged without. Gradually I endeavoured to engage the attention of my charmer with indifferent objects. I adorned her apartments with the most beautiful products of the gardener's care I was able to procure. I obtained some for her which she had never seen before. She instructed me in botany; she brought forth her port-folios, and showed me her charming drawings. I called her |