or awoke
the vivid impressions of her young fancy; and I found some trouble in
curbing within rational limits her natural and fascinating
prepossessions. As she grew older, and passed what she deemed the
drudgery of learning, and drew nearer, with rapid steps, to Thought's
promised land of compensation, we constantly read and conversed
together. We dwelt on the inspired pages of the poets, I, with old
age's returning love for the romantic, and increasing reverence for
the true, and she, with the intense, bewildered delight of a spirit
that hoped all things, and a simple faith that trusted the future
would brightly fulfill all the fairest prospects which poetry could
portray.

Her disposition was sanguine to an extreme, with the happy faculty of
believing what she hoped; and she possessed in a remarkable degree the
power of expressing and defining her ideas and emotions, and rendering
them visible by words. She never paused for an expression, or selected
an injudicious one; and her fluency was the result of a mingled
vividness and clearness of intellect, blended with artist-skill, and
all the fervor of dawning and dreaming womanhood.

Her affections were spontaneous and impassioned, at once impulsive and
enduring, and, like all enthusiasts, she was frequently governed by
prejudice. Her little sister was a child of rare beauty and
gentleness, and was Theresa's perfect idol. She was perpetually
contriving pleasant surprises for her favorite; and it was her delight
to wreath flowers around Amy's golden curls, and to add a thousand
fantastic decorations to her delicate and seraphic loveliness. They
would have made an exquisite picture, those two sisters, so different
in age and character; the one so fair, with childhood's silent and
fragile beauty, the other glowing with life and premature thought,
already testing the "rapture of the strife," and revealing in the
intense gaze of her dark, restless eyes, the world of gleaming visions
within whose enchantment she lived.

It was when my pupil had reached her fourteenth year, that, in
obedience to her father's written directions, she prepared to leave
our tranquil home, to enter the school of the convent, near the city
of ----. I know not why Mr. Germaine wished her placed there, for he
was himself a Protestant, but the advantages of instruction were at
that time tempting. Probably, in dwelling on them, he overlooked the
risk of placing his daughter where the unnumbered gra