times in one place, and sometimes in another, on their return. He would then find opportunities of greeting Mela kindly, which was about as gratifying as a billet-doux.
Now, had Mela had more liberty, instead of being thus immured like a nun, and had her good mother not played the duenna, and guarded her as the miser does his treasure, her lover’s dumb wooing would not have made half the impression it did upon her heart. She was just, however, at that critical period of a girl’s life, when nature and a cautious mother are in the habit of teaching a different lesson. For the former gives birth to a succession of warm and novel feelings, which she instructs her to view in the light of the sweetest panacea of existence; while the latter carefully prepares her against the surprises of a passion, which she describes as more dangerous and destructive than a fatal disease. The former inspires her heart with a soft genial glow, peculiar to life’s sweet season of the spring; while the latter would often have her remain ever cold and cheerless, as wintry snow. Two such opposite systems of two equally kindly-disposed mothers, both acting at a time upon the flexible feelings of the poor girl, made her obedient to neither, so that she was induced to take a sort of middle course, appointed her by neither. For Mela highly valued the virtue and propriety inculcated by her education,
