parents hung over her couch
almost despairing of her recovery; their fond hearts almost breaking, as
they heard her sweet voice, in the wild accent of delirious intervals,
calling aloud on Arthur, and beseeching their consent and blessing to
restore her to health; and scarcely less painful was it in her lucid
hours to see her clasp her mother's hands repeatedly, and murmur, in a
voice almost inarticulate from weakness--

"Do not be anxious or grieved for me, my own dear mamma, I shall soon
get well, and be your happy Emmeline again. I cannot be miserable, when
I have you and papa and Ellen to love me so tenderly," and then, she
would cling to her mother's neck, and kiss her till she would sink to
sleep upon her bosom, as in infancy and childhood she had so often done;
and dearer than ever did that gentle girl become, in these hours of
suffering, to all who had loved her so fondly before; they had deemed it
almost impossible that affection could in any way be increased, and yet
it was so. Strange must be that heart which can behold a being such as
Emmeline cling to it, as if its protection and its love were now all
that bound her to earth, and still remain unmoved and cold. Affection is
ever strengthened by dependence--dependence at least like this; and
there was something peculiarly touching in Emmeline's present state of
mental weakness. Her parents felt, as they gazed on her, that they had
occasioned the anguish which had prostrated her on a bed of sickness;
and yet their child clung to them as if, in the intensity of her
affection for them, and theirs for her, she would strive to forget her
unhappy love, and be once more happy.

Time rolled heavily by, and some few weeks passed, ere Emmeline was
sufficiently convalescent to leave her room, and then her pallid
features and attenuated form were such constant and evident proofs of
that mental as well as bodily fever, that Mrs. Hamilton could not look
on her without pain. She was still inwardly restless and uneasy, though
evidently struggling for cheerfulness, and Mr. Maitland, to whom some
necessary particulars of her tale had been told, gave as his opinion,
that some secret anxiety still rested on her mind, which would be much
better removed; the real cause of that solicitude her parents very
easily penetrated. Mr. Hamilton, fearing the effects of excitement in
her still very delicate state, had refrained from telling her all he had
accomplished in young Myrvin's fav