But no such voice it seems did speak, or if so, it made itself not heard.
The charmed ear is deaf to whom it whispers—the fascinated eye is blind to whom it would suggest such comparison.
Yes, blind! Blind as the aged patriarch of old. Jacob is blessed: the blessing and the birthright is taken from the rightful claimant. "I have blessed him, yea, and he shall be blessed."
Mary has not yet spoken, but there is a silence more expressive than words—and expressive, as that which had followed Mr. Temple's declaration and so coldly fallen upon his trembling hopes, was, to Eugene Trevor, the silence which now hung upon her tongue. That blushing face, those tearful eyes, those smiling lips, spoke all that he desired to hear. They emboldened him so far as the pressing one of the soft hands, which now nervously grasped the chair beside him, and though it trembled, it was not withdrawn; and then the first overpowering flood of agitation subdued—Mary, her emotion soothed and composed, had told her love with "virgin pride—" and now sat calmly happy by her lover's side, listening to his earnest conversation on many points connected with that future now before them; yes whatever might have been the nature of his feelings on the occasion, how intense and delicious were her sensations of happiness; for as it is expressed in the pages of the book to which we have, in the last chapter, had occasion to allude:
"In the pure heart of a young girl loving for the first time, love is far more ecstatic than in man's more fevered nature. Love then and there, makes the only state of human existence which is at once capable of calmness and transport."
CHAPTER XII.
She hath flung
Her all upon the venture of her vow,
And in her trust leans meekly, like a flower,
By the still river tempted from its stem
And on its bosom floating.
WILLIS.