Oh had not her celestial confidence, her angelic purity, sublimed every thought, restrained every wish; at that moment; that too fortunate; too dangerous moment!!!—Yet even as it was, in the delicious agony of my soul, I secretly exclaimed with the legislator of Lesbos—“It is too difficult to be always virtuous!” while I half audibly breathed on the ear of Glorvina—
“Nor I, O first of all created beings! never, never till I beheld thee, did I know the pure rapture which the intercourse of a kindred soul awakens—of that sacred communion with a superior intelligence, which, while it raises me in my own estimation, tempts me to emulate that excellence I adore.”
Glorvina raised her head—her melting eyes met mine, and her cheek rivalled the snow of that hand which was pressed with passionate ardour on my lips. Then her eyes were bashfully withdrawn; she again drooped her head—not on the chair, but on my shoulder. What followed, angels might have attested—but the eloquence of bliss is silence.
Suffice it to say, that I am now certain of at least being understood; and that in awakening her comprehension, I have roused my own. In a word, I now feel I love!!—for the first time I feel it. For the first time my heart is alive to the most profound, the most delicate, the most ardent, and most refined of all human passions. I am now conscious that I have hitherto mistaken the senses for the heart, and the blandishments of a vitiated imagination for the pleasures of the soul. In short, I now feel myself in that state of beatitude, when the fruition of all the heart’s purest wishes leaves me nothing to desire, and the innocence of those wishes nothing to fear. You know but little of the sentiment which now pervades my whole being, and blends with every atom of my frame, if you suppose I have formally told Glorvina I loved her, or that I appear even to suspect that I am (rapturous thought!) beloved in return. On the contrary, the same mysterious delicacy, the same delicious reserve still exist. It is a sigh, a glance, a broken sentence, an imperceptible motion, (imperceptible to all eyes but our own) that betrays us to each other. Once I used to fall at the feet of the “Cynthia of the moment,” avow my passion, and swear eternal truth. Now I make no genuflection, offer no vows, and swear no oaths; and yet feel more than ever.—More!—dare I then place in the scale of comparison what I now feel with what I ever felt before? The thought is sacrilege!
This child of Nature appears to me each succeeding day, in a phasis more bewitchingly attractive than the last. She now feels her power over me, (with woman’s intuition, where the heart is in question!) and this consciousness gives to her manners a certain roguish tyranny, that renders her the most charming tantalizing being in the world. In a thousand little instances she contrives to teaze me; most, when most she delights me! and takes no pains to conceal my simple folly from others, while she triumphs in it herself. In short, she is the last woman in the world who would incur the risk of satiating him who is best in her love; for the variability of her manner, always governed by her ardent, though volatilized feelings, keeps suspense on the eternal qui vive! and the sweet assurance given by the eyes one moment, is destroyed in the next by some arch sally of the lip.
To-day I met her walking with the nurse. The old woman, very properly, made a motion to retire as I approached. Glorvina would not suffer this, and twined her arm round that of her fostermother. I was half inclined to turn on my heel, when a servant came running to the nurse for the keys. It was impossible to burst them from her side, and away she hobbled after the barefooted laquais. I looked reproachfully at Glorvina, but her eyes were fixed on an arbutus tree rich in blossom.
“I wish I had that high branch,” said she, “to put in my vase.” In a moment I was climbing up the tree like a great school-boy, while she, standing beneath, received the blossoms in her extended drapery; and I was on the point of descending, when a branch, lovelier than all I had culled, attracted my eye: this I intended to present in propria persona, that I might get a kiss of the hand in return. With my own hands sufficiently engaged in effecting my descent, I held my Hesperian branch in my teeth, and had nearly reached the ground, when Glorvina playfully approached her lovely mouth to snatch the prize from mine. We were just in contact—I suddenly let fall the branch—and—Father John appeared walking towards us; while Glorvina, who, it seems, had perceived him before she had placed herself in the way of danger, now ran towards him, covered with blushes and malignant little smiles. In short, she makes me feel in a thousand trivial instances the truth of Epictetus’s maxim, that to bear and forbear, are the powers that constitute a wise man: to forbear, alone, would, in my opinion, be a sufficient test.
Adieu, H. M.