In short, I have had a thousand occasions to observe, that while she receives a decided compliment with the ease of almost bon ton nonchalance, a look, a broken sentence, a word, has the power of overwhelming her with confusion, or awakening all the soul of emotion in her bosom. All this I can understand.
As the dew of the evening now began to fall, the invalid Prince and his lovely daughter arose to retire. And those who had been rendered so happy by their condescension, beheld their retreat with regret, and followed them with blessings. Whiskey, milk, and oaten bread were now distributed in abundance by the old nurse and the steward; and the dancing was recommenced with new ardour.
The priest and I remained behind, conversing with the old and jesting with the young—he in Irish, and I in English, with such as understood it. The girls received my little gallantries with considerable archness, and even with some point of repartee; while the priest rallied them in their own way, for he seems as playful as a child among them, though evidently worshipped as a sakit. And the moon rose resplendently over the vale, before it was restored to its wonted solitary silence.
Glorvina has made the plea of a headache these two mornings back, for playing the truant at her drawing desk; but the fact is, her days and nights are devoted to the sentimental sorcery of Rosseau, and the effects of her studies are visible in her eyes. When we meet, her glance sinks beneath the ardour of mine in soft confusion; her manner is no longer childishly playful, or carelessly indifferent, and sometimes a sigh, scarce breathed, is discovered by the blush which glows on her cheek for the inadvertency of her lip. Does she, then, begin to feel she has a heart? Does “Le besoin de l’ame tendre,” already throb with vague emotion in her bosom? Her abstracted air, her delicious melancholy, her unusual softness, betray the nature of the feelings by which she is overwhelmed—they are new to herself; and sometimes I fancy, when she turns her melting eyes on me, it is to solicit their meaning. O! if I dared become the interpreter between her and her heart—if I dared indulge myself in the hope, the belief that—— and what then? ’Tis all folly, ’tis madness, ’tis worse! But whoever yet rejected the blessing for which his soul thirsted?—And in the scale of human felicities, if there is one in which all others is summed up—above all others supremely elevated—it is the consciousness of having awakened the first sentiment of the sweetest, the sublimest of all passions, in the bosom of youth, genius, and sensibility.
Adieu, H. M.
LETTER XX.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
I had just finished my last by the beams of a gloriously setting sun, when I was startled by a pebble being thrown in at my window. I looked out, and perceived Father John in the act of flinging up another, which the hand of Glorvina (who was leaning on his arm) prevented.