During these hours, Margaretta and I were left to amuse ourselves in the best manner we could. She was a fine pianist. I had inherited my father's passion for music, and was never tired of listening to her while she played. If the weather was unfavourable for a ride or stroll in the Park, I read aloud to her, while she painted groups of flowers from nature, for which she had an exquisite taste. The time fled away only too fast, and this mingling of amusement and mental occupation was very delightful to me, whose chief employment for years had been confined to musty parchments in a dull, dark office.
Our twilight rambles through the glades of the beautiful park, at that witching hour when both eye and heart are keenly alive to sights and sounds of beauty, possessed for me the greatest charm.
I loved—but only as a brother loves—the dear, enthusiastic girl, who leaned so confidingly on my arm, whose glorious eyes, lighted up from the very fountain of passion and feeling, were raised to mine as if to kindle in my breast the fire of genius which emanated from her own.
Her vivid imagination, fostered in solitude, seized upon everything bright and beautiful in nature, and made it her own.
"The lips of song burst open
And the words of fire rushed out."
At such moments it was impossible to regard Margaretta with indifference. I could have loved, nay, adored, had not my mind been preoccupied with a fairer image.
Margaretta was too great a novice in affairs of the heart, to notice the guarded coolness of my homage. My society afforded her great pleasure, and she wanted the common-place tact of her sex to disguise it from me.
Dear, lovely, confiding Margaretta, how beautiful does your simple truth and disinterested affection appear, as I look back through the long vista of years, and find in the world so few who resemble thee!
Towards the close of a hot day in June we visited the fragrant fields of new-mown hay, and Margaretta tired herself by chasing a pair of small, coquettish blue butterflies, who hovered along the hedge, which bounded the dusty highway, like living gems, and not succeeding in capturing the shy things, she proposed leaving the road, and returning home through the Park.