He must have loved her without knowing it; and perhaps such insensible attachments, waxing stronger day by day, strike the deepest root, and boast the longest existence: hardy plants that live and flourish through the frowns of many winters, contrasting nobly with more brilliant and ephemeral posies, forced by circumstances to sudden maturity and rapid decay—
"As flowers that first in spring-time burst,
The earliest wither too."
Nevertheless, for both sexes,
"'Tis all but a dream at the best:"
and Norah Macormac's vision, scarcely acknowledged while everything went smoothly, assumed very glowing colours when the impossibility of its realisation dawned on her; when Lady Mary pointed out the folly of an attachment to a penniless subaltern unsteady in habits, while addicted overmuch to sports of the field.
With average experience and plenty of common-sense, the mother had been sorely puzzled how to act. She was well aware, that advice in such cases, however judiciously administered, often irritates the wound it is intended to heal; that "warnings"—to use her own words—"only put things in people's heads;" and that a fancy, like a heresy, sometimes dies out unnoticed when it is not to be stifled by argument nor extirpated with the strong hand. Yet how might she suffer this pernicious superstition to grow, under her very eyes? Was she not a woman? and must she not speak her mind? Besides, she blamed her own blindness, that her daughter's intimacy with the scape-grace had been unchecked in its commencement, and, smarting with self-reproach, could not forbear crying aloud, when she had better have held her tongue!
So Miss Norah discovered she was in love, after all. Mamma said so! no doubt mamma was right. The young lady had herself suspected something of the kind long ago, but Lady Mary's authority and remonstrances placed the matter beyond question. She was very fond of her mother, and, to do her justice, tried hard to follow her ladyship's advice. So she thought the subject over, day by day, argued it on every side, in accordance with, in opposition to, and independent of, her own inclinations, to find as a result, that during waking and sleeping hours alike, the image of Daisy was never absent from her mind.
Then a new beauty seemed to dawn in the sweet young face. The very peasants about the place noticed a change; little Ella, playing at being grown-up, pretended she was "Sister Norah going to be married;" and papa, when she retired with her candle at night, turning fondly to his wife, would declare—
"She'll be the pick of the family now, mamma, when all's said and done! They're a fair-looking lot, even the boys. Divil thank them, then, on the mother's side! But it's Norah that's likest yourself, my dear, when we were young, only not quite so stout, maybe, and a thought less colour in her cheek."