"Alas!"
"This raging love, which has unconsciously entered your heart, cannot be very great; it is rather the awakening of the mind to those gentle feelings and noble instincts, which embellish existence and characterize the woman, than a passion; your love is only in reality a momentary exaltation of the brain's feverish imagination; like all young girls, you aspire to the unknown, you seek an ideal, the reality of which does not exist for you; but you do not love. Nay, more, you cannot love; the feeling you experience at the moment is entirely in the head, and the heart goes for nothing."
"Mother!" the young girl interrupted.
"Dear Diana," she continued, taking her hand, and pressing it, "let me make you suffer a little now, to spare you at a later date the horrible pangs which would produce the despair of your whole existence. The man you fancy you love you will probably never see again; he is ignorant of your attachment, and does not share it. I am speaking cold and implacable reason; it is logical, and spares us much grief, while passion is never so, and always produces pain; but supposing for a moment that this young man loved you, you could never be his."
"But if he love me, mother," she said, timidly.
"Poor babe!" the mother continued, with an accent of sublime pity. "Do you know even whether he be free? Who has told you that he is not married? But I will allow it for a moment: this young man is noble; he belongs to one of the oldest and proudest families in Europe; his fortune is immense. Do you believe that he will ever consent to abandon all the social advantages his position guarantees him?—that he will bow his family pride to give his hand to the daughter of a poor American squatter?"
"It is true," she murmured, letting her head fall in her hands.
"And even if he did so, though it is impossible, would you consent to follow him, and leave in the desert a father and mother, who have only you, and who would die of despair ere your departure? Come, Diana, answer, would you consent?"
"Oh, never, never, mother!" she exclaimed, madly "Oh, I love you most of all!"
"Good, my darling; that is how I wished to see you. I am happy that my words have found the road to your heart. This man is kind; he has done us immense service; we owe him gratitude, but nothing more."