ore intervene, and--I
cannot conclude the sentence. As I have written, the tumultuous
happiness of hope has come over me to confuse and overwhelm everything
else. At this moment my pulse riots with fever; the room swims before
my eyes; everything is indistinct and jarring--a chaos of emotions. Oh!
that happiness should ever have such excess!

When Emily received and laid this letter to her heart, she felt nothing
in common with the spirit which it breathed. With that quick transition
and inconstancy of feeling common in women, and which is as frequently
their safety as their peril, her mind had already repented of the
weakness of the last evening, and relapsed into the irresolution and
bitterness of her former remorse. Never had there been in the human
breast a stronger contest between conscience and passion;--if, indeed,
the extreme softness (notwithstanding its power) of Emily's attachment
could be called passion it was rather a love that had refined by the
increase of its own strength; it contained nothing but the primary guilt
of conceiving it, which that order of angels, whose nature is love,
would have sought to purify away. To see him, to live with him, to
count the variations of his countenance and voice, to touch his hand at
moments when waking, and watch over his slumbers when he slept--this
was the essence of her wishes, and constituted the limit to her desires.
Against the temptations of the present was opposed the whole history of
the past. Her mind wandered from each to each, wavering and wretched,
as the impulse of the moment impelled it. Hers was not, indeed, a strong
character; her education and habits had weakened, while they rendered
more feminine and delicate, a nature originally too soft. Every
recollection of former purity called to her with the loud voice of duty,
as a warning from the great guilt she was about to incur; and whenever
she thought of her child--that centre of fond and sinless sensations,
where once she had so wholly garnered up her heart--her feelings melted
at once from the object which had so wildly held them riveted as by a
spell, to dissolve and lose themselves in the great and sacred fountain
of a mother's love.

When Falkland came that evening, she was sitting at a corner of the
saloon, apparently occupied in reading, but her eyes were fixed upon her
boy, whom Mrs. St. John was endeavouring at the opposite end of the
room to amuse. The child, who was fond of Falkland, came up