“Oh, Ellen, do not laugh at me; it would be affectation in me to pretend I am not very, very happy at the prospect before me. You know well enough that I have long preferred him to any one, but you cannot guess how ardently I wish I had never before fancied myself in love. All that has gone before seems to me now like a dream. My former likings have been nothing compared to this. Still I would give the world that my heart was quite, quite fresh and pure; that I could have given it to him wholly and solely. I envy you, Ellen, having married so early that your feelings had never been tampered with, as mine have been.” Ellen was surprised at the warmth with which Caroline spoke, and thought in her heart that she had never felt all this for Mr. Cresford. Caroline resumed— “I wonder how a being so good, so superior, so excellent as Mr. Allenham can have ever found any thing to please him, in such a poor, weak, frivolous creature as I am! I do feel so grateful to him! And I am sure if the devotion of my life can render me worthy of him, I may deserve him in that manner, though I can in no other.” Ellen was astonished at this burst of feeling in her sister. She had seen her, as she believed, in love before, that is to say, she had seen her pleased and flattered by the attentions of men; she had seen her ardently desiring to get away from her home, and she had seen her unhappy when a flirtation ended in nothing; but she had never before seen her love with all the devotion of which an affectionate heart is capable. A real true attachment exalts and refines the mind, and Mr. Allenham was a person with whom no one could associate without becoming better. The meekness and forbearance with which Caroline bore the eternal worry of her father’s temper, the asperity of which had increased with years, first attracted him; he admired her beauty (for a woman of seven-and-twenty, provided she enjoys good health, is as pretty as ever she was), and her evident pleasure in his preference, which, when it is accompanied with modesty, proves an almost irresistible charm to most men, combined to fix his affections. Her kind manner to all inferiors, and her gentle attention to any of the poor with whom she was brought in contact, satisfied his reason that she would make the best of wives for a clergyman. Nor was he mistaken in this expectation. But Captain Wareham, whose disposition inclined him to look on the dark side of every picture, now felt somewhat unhappy at the thoughts of losing the daughter who had been so long accustomed to his ways; although he had often been bitterly disappointed at Caroline’s failing to make a good establishment; a disappointment which he had been at no pains to conceal, and which did not contribute to make her own fall more lightly upon the poor girl.