Page:Glenarvon (Volume 1).djvu/179

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condescending; and Alice Mac Allain, it was supposed, was the sole cause of his reform.

Alice was credulous; and when she was first told that she was as fair as the opening rose, and soft and balmy as the summer breeze, she listened with delight to the flattering strain, and looked in the mirror to see if all she heard, were true. She beheld there a face, lovely as youth and glowing health could paint it, dimpling with ever-varying smiles, while hair, like threads of gold, curled in untaught ringlets over eyes of the lighest blue; and when she heard that she was loved, she could not bring herself to mistrust those vows which her own bosom was but too well prepared to receive. She had, perhaps, been won by the first who had attempted to gain her affections; but she fell into hands where falsehood had twined itself around the very heart's core:—she learned to love in no common school, and one by one every principle