Page:Glenarvon (Volume 1).djvu/117

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

soon as she had read the letter—(and every one would read it):—"when men begin to speak of duty, they have ceased to love." This remark gave Calantha but little consolation. Lord Avondale had quitted her too, without even bidding her farewell; and her thoughts continually dwelt on this disappointment.

Calantha knew not then that her misery was more than shared,—that Lord Avondale, though too proud to acknowledge it, was a prey to the deepest grief upon her account,—that he lived but in the hope of possessing the only being upon earth to whom he had attached himself,—and that the sentence pronounced against both, was a death stroke to his happiness, as well as to her own. When strong love awakes for the first time in an inexperienced heart it is so diffident, so tremblingly fearful, that it dares scarcely hope even for a return; and our own demerits appear before us, in such exaggerated colours, and the su-