nd that if he had seen
himself in this true light, he would have loved Viola at a distance
without disquieting her peace, but since he had spoken and knew she
loved him, he could not but persevere for her sake. We could see he
said it with a steady countenance, but a burning heart. Neither he nor
I was allowed to see Viola, but there was Dermot as constant reporter,
and, to my surprise, Viola was not the submissive daughter I had
expected. Lady Diana had never had any real ascendancy over her
children's wills or principles. Even Viola's obedience had been that
of duty, not of the heart, and she had from the first declared that
mamma might forbid her to marry Harold, or to correspond with him, and
she should consider herself bound to obey; but that she had given him
her promise, and that she could not and would not take it back again.
She would wait on for ever, if otherwise it could not be, but he had
her troth plight, and she _would_ be faithful to it. She would not give
up her crystal cross, and she sent Harold her love every day by her
brother, often in her mother's very hearing, saying she was too proud
of him to be ashamed. She had resolved on her own line of passive
obedience, but of never renouncing her engagement, and her brother
upheld her in it; while her uncle let himself be coaxed out of his
displeasure, and committed himself to that compromise plan of waiting
which his sister viewed as fatal, since Viola would only lose all her
bloom, and perhaps her health. Nothing, she said, was so much to be
deplored for a girl as a long engagement. The accepting a reformed
rake had been always against her principles, and she did not need even
the dreadful possibility of derangement, or the frightful story of his
first marriage, to make her inexorable. Viola, we were told, had made
up her mind that it was a case for perseverance, and all this time kept
up dauntlessly, not failing in spirits nor activity, but telling her
brother she had always known she should have to go through something,
but Harold's love was worth it, and she meant to be brave; how should
she not be when she knew Harold cared for her; and as to what seemed to
be objections in the eyes of others, did they not make her long the
more to compensate him?

"She has to make all her love to me, poor little woman, and very pretty
love it is," said Dermot.

Whether Harold made as much love in return to their ready medium I
cannot tell, for their confere