"I was devotedly attached to my father," she continued; "he educated me, and was so proud of the faculties which his own careful tending drew into activity, that it was the greatest happiness of my life to deserve the kindness which anticipated their development. There was no task my father set to me I did not feel myself able to conquer by the mere energy of the love I bore him. The education he bestowed upon me was not the cultivation of the intellect alone—I owe him a deeper debt, fatally as I have discharged it—for it was his higher aim to educate my affections. He succeeded so well, that I would at any moment have cheerfully surrendered my own fondest desires, or have sacrificed life itself, to comply with any wish of his. You shall judge whether I have a right to say that I loved him better than I loved myself.
"My mother was a beauty. A woman of whom one can say nothing more than that she was a beauty, is misplaced in the home of a man of intellect. One can never cease wondering how it is that such men marry such women; but I believe there are no men so easily ensnared by their own imaginations, or who trouble themselves so little about calculating consequences. They make an ideal, and worship it; and, as your true believers contrive to refresh their motionless saints by new draperies and tinsel, so they go on perpetually investing their idols with fictitious attributes, to encourage and sustain their devotions. But that sort of self-imposition can not last very long; and the best possible recipe for stripping the idol of its false glitter is to marry it! My father made this discovery in due time. He found that beauty without enthusiasm or intellect is even less satisfying than a picture, which is, at least, suggestive, and leaves something to the imagination. There was no sympathy between them. She existed only in company, which, from the languor of her nature, she hardly seemed to enjoy. Change, and variety, and the flutter of new faces were as necessary to her as they were wearisome to him; and so gradually and imperceptibly the distance widened between them, and his whole affections were concentrated on me. This may in some measure account for the formation of my character. I was neither weakened nor benefited by maternal tenderness; and my studies and habits, shaped and regulated by my father, imparted to me a strength and earnestness which—now that they avail me nothing—may speak of as existing in the past.
"It is nearly ten years since my mother died; she went out as a flower dies, drooping slowly, and retaining something of its sweetness to the end. My father outlived her several years. That was the happiest period of my life. There was not a break in the love that bound us together. But there came a struggle at last between us—a struggle in which that love was bitterly tried and tested on both sides.
"I made a deity to myself, as most young people do, especially when they are flattered into the belief that they are more spirituelle and capable of judging for themselves, than the rest of the world. It was a girlish fancy; all girls have such fancies, and look back upon them afterward as they look back upon their dreams, trying to collect and put together forms and colors that fade rapidly in the daylight of experience.
"One of our visitors made an impression upon me; perhaps that is the best way to describe it. He had a sombre and poetical air—that was the first thing that touched me—an oval face, very pale and thoughtful, and chiseled to an excess of refinement; a sensitive mouth; dark, melancholy eyes; and black, lustrous hair. I remember he had quite a Spanish or Italian cast of features; and that was dangerous to a young girl steeped in the lore of history and chivalry. You think it strange, perhaps, I should make this sort of confession to you; you expect that I should rather suffer you to believe that, until we met, I had never been disturbed by the sentiment of love; yet you may entirely believe it. This was a mere phantasy—the prescience of what was to come—the awakening of the consciousness of a capacity of loving which, until now, was never stirred in its depths. It merely showed me what was in my nature, but did not draw it out.
"The fascination was on the surface; but, while it lasted, I thought it intense; and such is the contradiction in the constitution of youth, that a little opposition from my father only helped to strengthen it. In the presence of that sad face, into which was condensed an irresistible influence, I was silent and timid, frightened at the touch of his white hands, and so confused that I could neither speak to him, nor look at him: but in my father's presence, when we talked of him, and my father hinted distrusts and antipathies, I was bold in his defense, and soared into an enthusiasm that often surprised us both. It was evident that I was in love—to speak by the card—and that the admonitions of experience were thrown away upon me.
"My father was grieved at this discovery, when it really came to take a serious shape of resistance to his advice. As yet, we had only flirted round the confines of the subject, and neither of us had openly recognized it as a reality. The action of the drama was in my own brain. The hero of my fantastic reveries regarded me only as a precocious child: was amused, or, at the utmost, interested by my admiration of him, which he could not fail to detect; and it was not until he imagined he had traced a deeper sentiment in my shy and embarrassed looks, that he began to feel any emotion himself. But the emotions which spring out of vanity or compassion, which come only as a sort of generous or pitying acknowledgment of an unsought devotion, have no stability in them. It is more natural, and more likely to insure duration of love that they should originate at the other side. Woman was formed to be sued and won; it is the law of our organization. Men value our affection in proportion to the efforts it has cost to gain them. The rights of a difficult conquest are worn with pride and exultation, while the fruits of an easy victory are held in indifference. These things, however, were mysteries to me then.
"There was a kind of love-scene between us. I can hardly recall any thing of it, except that I thought him more grand and noble than ever, and full of a magnificent patronage of my nerves and my ignorance. He was several years older than I was, which made a great distance between us, and made me look up to him with a superstitious homage. I remember nothing more about it, only that when I left him, I felt as if I had suddenly grown up into a woman.
"And now came the beginning of the struggle.
"We had other visitors who were better liked by my father. I could not then understand his objections to my Orlando. I have understood them since, and know that he was right in that, if he erred in the rest.