--that one person has been
intended from the beginning of the world to be formed for another. The
heir of Kirkpatrick and the Maid of Kirconnel exhibited to each other
such a similarity of thought, feeling, and sentiment, that love seemed
to have nothing more to do than to tie those threads which nature had
not only spun, but hung forth with a predisposed reciprocity of
communication. The discovery that their thoughts had taken the same
range, and reached an equal altitude of elevation, carried with it that
pleasant surprise that is always favourable to the progress of the
tender passion; and the delight of a new-born sympathy in sentiments
that had long gratified only the heart in which they were conceived, but
which now were seen glowing in the eyes of another, was only another
form of that passion itself.

Though Helen had seen many indications that might have satisfied her (if
her mind had been directed to the subject) that her father and mother
were bent upon a match between her cousin of Blacket House and her, she
had never, either from a want of courage or steady serious thought on
the subject, put it to herself what was her precise predicament or
condition, on the supposition of such circumstance being in itself true
and irremediable. She had hitherto had no great need for secresy,
because she did not love another; and her father, mother, and lover,
having taken it for granted that she was favourable to her cousin's
suit, nothing of a definite nature had ever transpired to call for a
demonstration on her part, as an alternative of dishonesty and
double-dealing. Her situation was now changed. She now loved, and loved
ardently, another; and the necessity she felt of meeting the heir of
Kirkpatrick in secret, brought out in full relief her inmost sense of
what were the views and purposes of her father and mother, and all the
responsibility of her negative conduct, as regarded the suit of him she
could never love. But, strange as it may seem, if she felt a difficulty
in correcting her cousin and disobeying her parents before the accession
of her love, she felt that difficulty rise to an impossibility after
that important event of her life. She trembled at the thought of her
love being crossed: one word of her rejection of the suit of her cousin
would reach the ears of her parents; dissension would be thrown into the
temple of peace; her love would be discovered; her lover, a man famous
in arms, and an aider of the J