"It is not too late,--the irrevocable vow is not yet breathed,--the path is not yet entered. If the mere description of duties makes you turn pale with dread, what will the reality be? I do not seek to terrify, but to convince. I received you as a precious charge from a dying mother, and I vowed over her grave to love, protect, and cherish you, as my own daughter. I saw the peculiar dangers to which you were liable from your ardent genius and exquisite sensibility, and I suffered you to pass through a discipline which my wealth made unnecessary, and which you have nobly borne. I did not wish my son to love you, not because you were the child of obscurity, but because I had constituted myself the guardian of your happiness, and I feared it would be endangered by a union with him. How dear is your happiness to me,--how holy I deem the charge I have assumed,--you may know by my telling you this. Never mother idolized a son as I do Ernest. He is precious as my heart's best blood,--he is the one idol that comes between me and my God. My love is more intense for the anxiety I feel on his account. If I could have prevented his loving;--but how could I, in the constant presence of an object so formed to inspire all the romance of love? I knew the serpent slept in the bottom of the fountain, and when the waters were stirred it would wake and uncoil. Gabriella!" she added, turning towards me, taking both hands in hers, and looking me in the face with her clear, eloquent, dark gray eyes, "you may be the angel commissioned by Providence to work out the earthly salvation of my son, to walk with him through the fiery furnace, to guard him in the lion's den, which his own passions may create. If to the love that hopeth all, the faith that believeth all, you add the charity that _endureth_ all, miracles may follow an influence so exalted, and, I say it with reverence, so divine." It is impossible to give but a faint idea of the power of Mrs. Linwood's language and manner. There was no vehemence, no gesticulation. Her eye did not flash or sparkle; it burned with a steady, penetrating light. Her voice did not rise in tone, but it gave utterance to her words in a full, deep stream of thought, inexhaustible and clear. I have heard it said that she talked "like a book," and so she did,--like the book of heavenly wisdom. Her sentiments were "apples of gold in pictures of silver," and worthy to be enshrined in a diamond casket. As I listened, I caught a portion of her sublime spirit, and felt equal to the duties which I had a short time before recoiled from contemplating.