It was indeed Calantha's misfortune to meet with too much kindness, or rather too much indulgence from almost all who surrounded her. The Duke, attentive solely to her health, watched her with the fondest solicitude, and the wildest wishes her fancy could invent, were heard with the most scrupulous attention and gratified with the most unbounded compliance. Yet, if affection, amounting to idolatry, could in any degree atone for the pain the errors of his child too often occasioned him, that affection was felt by Calantha for her Father.
Her feelings indeed swelled with a tide too powerful for the unequal resistance of her understanding:—her motives appeared the very best, but the actions which resulted from them were absurd and exaggerated. Thoughts, swift as lightening, hurried through her brain:—projects, seducing, but visionary crowded upon her view: without a curb she followed the impulse of her feelings; and
