Mr. Sinclair admitted that Jane was a girl full of affection, and likely to be extremely susceptible, yet it was absurd, he added, to suppose for a moment, that she would suffer them to be engaged, or her peace of mind disturbed, by a foolish regard for a smooth-faced boy, and she herself not much beyond sixteen.
There is scarcely to be found, in the whole range of human life and character, any observation more true, and at the same time more difficult to be understood, than the singular infatuation of parents who have survived their own passions,—whenever the prudence of their children happens to be called in question.
We know not whether such a fact be necessary to the economy of life, and the free breathings of youthful liberty, but this at least is clear to any one capable of noting down its ordinary occurrences, that no matter how acutely and vividly parents themselves may have felt the passion of love when young, they appear as ignorant of the symptoms that mark its stages in the lives of their children, as if all memory of its existence had been obliterated out of their being. Perhaps this may be wisely designed, and no doubt it is, but, alas! its truth is a melancholy comment upon the fleeting character of the only passion that charms our early life, and fills the soul with sensations too ethereal to be retained by a heart which grosser associations have brought beneath the standard of purity necessary for their existence in it.
Jane, as she bent her way to the place of appointment, felt like one gradually emerging out of darkness into light. The scene at dinner had quickened her moral sense, which, as the reader already knows, was previous to that perhaps morbidly acute. Every step, however, towards the idol of her young devotion, removed the memory of what had occurred at home, and collected around her heart all the joys and terrors that in maidenly diffidence characterize the interview she was about to give her lover. Oh how little do we know of those rapid lights and shadows which shift and tremble across the spirits of the gentle sex, when approaching to hold this tender communion with those whom they love. Nothing that we remember resembles the busy working of the soul on such occasions, so much as those lucid streamers which flit in sweeps of delicate light along the northern sky, filling it at once with beauty and terror, and emitting at the same time a far and almost inaudible undertone of unbroken music.
Trembling and fluttering like a newly-caught bird, Jane approached the place of meeting and found Osborne there awaiting her. The moment he saw the graceful young creature approach him, he felt that he had never until then loved her so intensely. The first declaration of their attachment was made during an accidental interview, but there is a feeling of buoyant confidence that flashes up from the heart, when, at the first concerted meeting of love we see the object of our affection advance towards us,—for that deliberate act of a faithful heart separates the beloved one, in imagination, to ourselves, and gives a fulness to our enjoyment which melts us in an exulting tenderness indescribable by language. Those who have doubted the punctuality of some beloved girl, and afterwards seen her come, will allow that our description of that rapturous moment is not overdrawn.
“My dear, dear Jane,” exclaimed Osborne, taking her hand and placing her beside him,
“I neither knew my own heart nor thee extent of its affection for you until this meeting. In what terms shall I express—but I will not attempt it—I cannot—but my soul burns with love for you, such as was ever felt by mortal.”
“It is my trust and confidence in your love that brings me here,” she replied; “and indeed, Charles, it is more than that—I know your health is, at the best, easily affected, and your spirits naturally prone to despondency; and I feared,” said the artless girl, “that—that—indeed I feared you might suffer pain, and that pain might bring on ill health again.”
“And I am so dear to you, Jane?”
Jane replied by a smile and looked inexpressibly tender.