detained against your wish, if you still pant for the strong excitement, the stormy rapture, as I have heard you call it, of the chase, the battle, and the tempest, you never could be happy here, whatever we might do to please you. Now, Durzil, seriously and deliberately, you are answered.” “I could be happy here. I am weary of agitation and excitement. I feel that I have erred—that the path I have taken leads not to happiness. I want tranquillity, repose of the heart, above all things—love!” “Then do not go—then I say positively, Durzil, dear Durzil, stay with us—you can find all these here.” “Are you sure—all of them?” “Sure? Why, if not here in this delicious, pastoral, simple country, in this dear cottage, with its lovely garden and calm waters, where in the world should you find tranquillity, if not here, in the midst of your best friends, in the bosom of your own family, where should you look for love?” “Theresa, there be more kinds of love than one—and that I crave is not cold, duteous, family affection.” Now, for the first time, it seemed that the young man’s meaning broke clearly upon her mind; now a sudden and bright illumination burst upon all that seemed strange and wild and inconsistent in his conduct, in his speech, in his very silence. Unsuspected before, it was now evident to her at once that deep, overmastering passion was the cause to which she must refer all that had been for some time past to her an incomprehensible enigma in her cousin’s demeanor. And now that she was assured, for the first time in her life, that she was really, deeply, ardently beloved—not as a pretty, childish playmate, not as an amiable and dear relative, but as herself, for herself, a lovable and lovely woman, how did the maiden’s heart respond to the great revelation? Elevated on the instant from the girl to the woman, a strange and thrilling sense, a sort of moral shock affected her whole system—was it of pleasure or of pain?