Adoptees -- Fiction; Fathers and daughters -- Fiction
Elizabeth rose on the following morning, her bosom glowing with a
sensation of acknowledged happiness. So much of young love brooded in
her heart, as quickened its pulsations, as gave lightness and joy to her
thoughts. She had no doubts, nor fears, nor even hopes: she was not
aware that love was the real cause of the grateful sense of happiness,
with which she avowed, to Heaven and herself, that all was peace. She
was glad to be reunited to Falkner, for whom she felt an attachment at
once so respectful, and yet, on account of his illness and melancholy,
so watchful and tender, as never allowed her to be wholly free from
solicitude when absent from him. Also she expected on that morning to
see Gerard Neville. When Falkner's letter came to hasten her departure
from Oakly, she felt grieved at the recall, at the moment when she was
expecting him to join her, so to fill up the measure of her enjoyments;
with all this, she was eager to obey, and anxious to be with him again.
Lady Cecil deputed Miss Jervis to accompany her. On the very morning of
their departure, Neville asked for a seat in the carriage; they
travelled to town together; and when they separated, Neville told her of
his intention of immediately securing a passage to America, and since
then had written a note to mention that he should ride over to Wimbledon
on that morning.
The deep interest that Elizabeth took in his enterprise made her
solicitous to know whether he had procured any further information; but
her paramount desire was to introduce him to Falkner, to inspire him
with her sentiments of friendship, and to see two persons whom she
considered superior to the rest of the world bound to each other by a
mutual attachment; she wanted to impart to her father a pity for
Alithea's wrongs, and an admiration for her devoted son. She walked in
the shrubbery before breakfast, enjoying nature with the enthusiasm of
love; she gathered the last roses of the departing season, and mingling
them with a few carnations, hung, with a new sense of rapture, over
these fairest children of nature; for it is the property of love to
enhance all our enjoyments, "to paint the lily, and add a perfume to the
rose." When she returned to the house, she was told that Falkner still
slept, and begged not to be disturbed. She breakfasted, therefore, by
herself, sitting by the open casement, and looking on the waving trees,
her flowers shedding a sweet atmosphere around; sometimes turning to her
open book, where she read of
"The heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb,"
and sometimes leaning her cheek upon her hand, in one of those reveries
where we rather feel than think, and every articulation of the frame
thrills with a living bliss.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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