Page:Guy Mannering Vol 1.djvu/345

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GUY MANNERING.
335

happiness, may make amends for all I must call upon her to forego? Or will a difference of dress, of attendance, of stile, as it is called, of the power of shifting at pleasure the scenes in which she seeks amusement,—will these outweigh, in her estimation, the prospect of domestic happiness, and the interchange of unabating affection? I say nothing of her father;—his good and evil qualities are so strangely mingled, that the former are neutralized by the latter, and that which she must regret as a daughter is so much blended with what she would gladly escape from, that I place the separation of the father and child as a circumstance which weighs little in her remarkable case. Meantime I keep up my spirits as I may. I have incurred too many hardships and difficulties to be presumptuous or confident in success, and I have been too often and too wonderfully extricated from them to be despondent.

"I wish you saw this country. I think the scenery would delight you. At least