Swelled my fond breast and filled the melting eye.
Yes, surely, “love is heaven, and heaven is love,” as has been said and sung any time for the last three thousand years; and Mahomed showed himself deeply read in the human heart, when he made the chief delight of his paradise to consist in it; not, I suspect, as is generally imagined, the passion in its purely gross acceptation, but that elevating and refining sentiment which beautifully attunes all our noblest emotions; which, when it swells the heart, causes it to overflow, like a mantling fountain, to refresh and fertilize all around. No, I shall never forget the thrill of delight with which I committed that daring act of petty larceny.
“Yes,” I continued, “dearest Olivia, I have long loved you. I loved you from the first, and would fain indulge a faint hope” (this was hypocritical, for I was quite sure of it) “that I am not wholly indifferent to you.”
The deepest blush overspread Olivia’s neck and face; she was summoning all her maidenly resolution for an avowal: “Dear Mr. Gernon,” she said, “believe me,—”
“Stope him! stope him, Gernon,” roared a stentorian voice at this moment; “cut the deevil off fra’ the tree!”
It was that confounded Patagonian Scotch cadet, in full cry after a squirrel, which, poor little creature, in an agony of fear, was making for a tree near to which we stood. “As you were,” never brought a recruit quicker into his prior position, than did this unseasonable interruption restore me to mine. Olivia hastily resumed her studies and her walk, whilst I, to prevent suspicion, and consequent banter, joined in the chevy to intercept the squirrel, secretly anathematizing Sandy McGrigor, whom I wished, with all my heart, in the bowels of Ben Lomond.
Reader, you may be curious to know whether Olivia Jenkins became in due time Mrs. Gernon. Ah, no! Ours was one of those juvenile passions destined to be nipped in the bud; one of those painted baubles, swelled by the breath of young desire, which float for a brief space on the summer breeze, then burst and disappear: or a perennial plant, whose beautiful maturity passes rapidly to decay.
Our destinies pointed different ways. Too much calculation was fatal to her happiness; too little has been, perhaps, as detrimental to mine. Years on years rolled on, chequered by many strange vicissitudes, when, in other scenes and under widely different circumstances, we met again: the flush of youth had long departed from her cheeks—the once laughing eyes were brilliant no more—and
The widow’s sombre cap concealed
Her once luxuriant hair.