you,
you would not speak thus. Come, let us ramble in our woods.'

So saying, he withdrew her from the more public situation in which they
were then placed, and entered, by a winding walk, those beautiful bowers
that had given so fair and fitting a name to Ducie. Ah! that was a
ramble of rich delight, as, winding his arm round her light waist, he
poured into her palpitating ear all the eloquence of his passion. Each
hour that they had known each other was analysed, and the feelings
of each moment were compared. What sweet and thrilling confessions!
Eventually it was settled, to the complete satisfaction of both,
that both had fallen in love at the same time, and that they had been
mutually and unceasingly thinking of each other from the first instant
of their meeting.

The conversation of lovers is inexhaustible. Hour glided away after
hour, as Ferdinand alternately expressed his passion and detailed the
history of his past life. For the curiosity of woman, lively at all
times, is never so keen, so exacting, and so interested, as in her
anxiety to become acquainted with the previous career of her lover. She
is jealous of all that he has done before she knew him; of every person
to whom he has spoken. She will be assured a thousand times that he
never loved before, yet she credits the first affirmation. She envies
the mother who knew him as a child, even the nurse who may have rocked
his cradle. She insists upon a minute and finished portraiture of his
character and life.

Why did he not give it? More than once it was upon his lips to reveal
all; more than once he was about to pour forth all his sorrows, all the
entanglements of his painful situation; more than once he was about
to make the full and mortifying confession, that, though his heart was
hers, there existed another, who even at that moment might claim the
hand that Henrietta clasped with so much tenderness. But he checked
himself. He would not break the charm that surrounded him; he would not
disturb the clear and brilliant stream in which his life was at this
moment flowing; he had not courage to change by a worldly word the scene
of celestial enchantment in which he now moved and breathed. Let us
add, in some degree for his justification, that he was not altogether
unmindful of the feelings of Miss Grandison. Sufficient misery remained,
at all events, for her, without adding the misery of making her
rival cognizant of her mortification. The deed must be d