Page:Glenarvon (Volume 1).djvu/193

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conversation took place respecting her between himself and the Count:

"You remember her," said Gondimar, "a wild and wayward girl." Is she less, do you suppose, an object of attraction now in the more endearing character of mother and of wife—so gentle, so young she seems, so pure, and yet so passionately attached to her husband and infant boy, that I think even you Viviani would feel convinced of her integrity. She seems indeed one born alone to love, and to be loved, if love itself might exist in a creature whom purity, and every modest feeling seem continually to surround.

Viviani smiled in scorn. Gondimar, this Calantha, this fair and spotless flower is a woman, and, as such, she must be frail. Besides, I know that she is so in a thousand instances, though as yet too innocent to see her danger, or to mistrust our sex. You have often described to me her excessive fondness for music. What think you of it? She does not hear it as the