er
human ear, would startle the bashful creature into alarm; and whilst her
cheek became alternately pale and crimson at such an avowal thus uttered
aloud, she would wipe away the tears that arose to her eyes whenever the
depths of her affection were stirred by those pensive broodings which
gave its sweetest charm to youthful love.

In thus seeking solitude, it is not to be imagined that our young
heroine was drawn thither by a love of contemplating nature in those
fresher aspects which present themselves in the stillness of her remote
recesses. She sought not for their own sakes the shades of the grove,
the murmuring cascade, nor the voice of the hidden rivulet that
occasionally stole out from its leafy cover, and ran in music towards
the ampler stream of the valley.

No, no; over her heart and eye the spirit of their beauty passed idly
and unfelt. All of external life that she had been wont to love and
admire gave her pleasure no more. The natural arbors of woodbine, the
fairy dells, and the wild flowers that peeped in unknown sweetness about
the hedges, the fairy fingers, the blue-bells, the cow-slips, with many
others of her fragrant and graceful favorites, all, all, charmed her,
alas, no more. Nor at home, where every voice was tenderness, and every
word affection, did there exist in her stricken heart that buoyant sense
of enjoyment which had made her youth like the music of a brook, where
every thing that broke the smoothness of its current only turned it
into melody. The morning and evening prayer--the hymn of her sister
voices--their simple spirit of tranquil devotion--and the touching
solemnity of her father, worshipping God upon the altar of his own
heart--all, all this, alas--alas, charmed her no more. Oh, no--no;
many motives conspired to send her into solitude, that she might in the
sanctity of unreproving nature cherish her affection for the youth whose
image was ever, ever before her. At home such was the timid delicacy of
her love, that she felt as if its indulgence even in the stillest depths
of her own heart, was disturbed by the conversation of her kindred, and
the familiar habits of domestic life. Her father's, her brother's, and
her sisters' voices, produced in her a feeling of latent shame, which,
when she supposed for a moment that they could guess her attachment,
filled her with anxiety and confusion. She experienced besides a sense
of uneasiness on reflecting that she practiced, for the first