And must I submit? Are you determined to make a rascal like me admire, and love, and give place to all the fine affections of the heart?
Ay, determined!
Oh, sister!—(Louisa at this moment entered.) To you too I have behaved like a scoundrel! A tyrant! A petulant, ostentatious, imperious braggart!
You mistake! replied Louisa, eagerly. You mistake! You are talking of a very different man! A being I could not understand. You are my brother!—My brother!—I have found the way to your heart! Will make it all my own! Will twine myself round it! Shake me off if you can!
The energy with which she spoke, and looked, and kissed him, was irresistible! He was overpowered: the tears gushed to his eyes, but he repressed them; he thought them unmanly; and, seeing his medical friend enter, exclaimed—I have surgeons for the body, and surgeons for the mind, who cut with so deep yet so steady a hand that they take away the noxious, and leave the wound to suppurate and heal!
Can we do less? said I. Ours is no common task! We are acting in behalf of society: we have found a treasure, by which it is to be enriched. Few indeed are those puissant and heavenly endowed spirits, that are capable of guiding, enlightening, and leading the human race onward to felicity! What is there precious but mind? And when mind, like a diamond of uncommon growth, exceeds a certain magnitude, calculation cannot find its value!
I once more left him; and never did I quit the company of human being, no not of Anna St. Ives herself, with a more glowing and hoping heart. But why describe sensations to thee, Oliver, with which thou art so intimately acquainted? To bid thee rejoice, to invite thee to participate in felicity, which may and must so widely diffuse itself, were equally to wrong thy understanding and thy heart.