ant watch over all, and it was when the spectator thought himself
most in communion with her spirit, that he most felt its pure and
correcting influence. Perhaps a cast of high intelligence, of a natural
power to discriminate, which much surpassed the limited means accorded to
females of that age, contributed their share to hold those near her in
respect, and served in some degree as a mild and wise repellant, to
counteract the attractions of her gentleness and candor. In short, one
cast unexpectedly in her society would not have been slow to infer, and he
would have decided correctly, that Adelheid de Willading was a girl of
warm and tender affections, of a playful but regulated fancy, of a firm
and lofty sense of all her duties, whether natural or merely the result of
social obligations, of melting pity, and yet of a habit and quality to
think and act for herself, in all those cases in which it was fitting for
a maiden of her condition and years to assume such self-control.

It was now more than a year since Adelheid had become fully sensible of
the force of her attachment for Sigismund Steinbach, and during all that
time she had struggled hard to overcome a feeling which she believed could
lead to no happy result. The declaration of the young man himself, a
declaration that was extorted involuntarily and in a moment of powerful
passion, was accompanied by an admission of its uselessness and folly, and
it first opened her eyes to the state of her own feelings. Though she had
listened, as all of her sex will listen, even when the passion is
hopeless, to such words coming from lips they love, it was with a
self-command that enabled her to retain her own secret, and with a settled
and pious resolution to do that which she believed to be her duty to
herself, to her father, and to Sigismund. From that hour she ceased to see
him, unless under circumstances when it would have drawn suspicion on her
motives to refuse, and while she never appeared to forget her heavy
obligations to the youth, she firmly denied herself the pleasure of even
mentioning his name when it could be avoided. But of all ungrateful and
reluctant tasks, that of striving to forget is the least likely to
succeed. Adelheid was sustained only by her sense of duty and the desire
not to disappoint her father's wishes, to which habit and custom had given
nearly the force of law with maidens of her condition, though her reason
and judgment no less than her affecti