vouring
breeze. But Lucy was so beautiful, so devoutly attached to him, of a
temper so exquisitely soft and kind, that, while he could have wished
it were possible to inspire her with a greater degree of firmness and
resolution, and while he sometimes became impatient of the extreme fear
which she expressed of their attachment being prematurely discovered,
he felt that the softness of a mind, amounting almost to feebleness,
rendered her even dearer to him, as a being who had voluntarily clung
to him for protection, and made him the arbiter of her fate for weal or
woe. His feelings towards her at such moments were those which have been
since so beautifully expressed by our immortal Joanna Baillie:

Thou sweetest thing,
That e'er did fix its lightly-fibred sprays
To the rude rock, ah! wouldst thou cling to me?
Rough and storm-worn I am; yet love me as
Thou truly dost, I will love thee again
With true and honest heart, though all unmeet
To be the mate of such sweet gentleness.

Thus the very points in which they differed seemed, in some measure, to
ensure the continuance of their mutual affection. If, indeed, they had
so fully appreciated each other's character before the burst of passion
in which they hastily pledged their faith to each other, Lucy might have
feared Ravenswood too much ever to have loved him, and he might have
construed her softness and docile temper as imbecility, rendering her
unworthy of his regard. But they stood pledged to each other; and Lucy
only feared that her lover's pride might one day teach him to regret
his attachment; Ravenswood, that a mind so ductile as Lucy's might, in
absence or difficulties, be induced, by the entreaties or influence of
those around her, to renounce the engagement she had formed.

"Do not fear it," said Lucy, when upon one occasion a hint of such
suspicion escaped her lover; "the mirrors which receive the reflection
of all successive objects are framed of hard materials like glass or
steel; the softer substances, when they receive an impression, retain it
undefaced."

"This is poetry, Lucy," said Ravenswood; "and in poetry there is always
fallacy, and sometimes fiction."

"Believe me, then, once more, in honest prose," said Lucy, "that, though
I will never wed man without the consent of my parents, yet neither
force nor persuasion shall dispose of my hand till you renounce the
right I have given you to it."

The lovers had amp