for a
single instant, more heavily in his own, while she drew a deep long
breath, as if a weight had been taken from her bosom.
"Oh, Wilton!" she said, "it makes all the difference in his views. It
will make all the difference in our fate. You know that it would make
none to me; that the man I loved would be loved under any
circumstances of fortune or station, but with him it is the first,
the greatest consideration. There may be difficulties still; there
may be opposition; for, as you know, I am an only child, and my
father thinks that nothing can equal what I have a right to expect;
but still that opposition will vanish when he sees that my happiness
is concerned, if the great and predominant prejudice of his education
is not arrayed against us. Oh! Wilton, Wilton, your words have made
me very happy."
Her words certainly made Wilton happy in return;--indeed, most
happy. His fate had suddenly brightened from all that was dark and
cheerless, from a situation in which the sweet, early dream of love
itself but rendered everything that was sombre, painful, and
distressing in his course, more gloomy, more bitter, more full of
despair, it had changed, to the possession and the hope of all that
the most sanguine imagination could have pictured of glad, and
joyful, and happy, to the prospect of wealth and station, to the hope
of obtaining the being that he loved best on earth, and to the
certainty of possessing her early, her first, her warm, her full
affection.
Had Wilton given way to what he felt at that moment, he would have
clasped her to his heart and sealed the covenant of their love on the
sweet lips that gave him such assurance of happiness. But he
remembered that she was there alone with him, in full confidence,
under the safeguard of all his best feelings, and he would not for
the world have done one thing that in open day could have called the
colour into her cheek. He loved her deeply, fully, and nobly, and
though, under other circumstances, he might scarcely have hesitated,
he now forebore. But again and again he pressed his lips upon her
hand, and thanked her again and again for all that she had said, and
for all the hopes and glad tidings that her words implied.
Their conversation then turned to love, and to their feelings towards
each other. How could it be helped? And Wilton told her all; how the
passion had grown upon him, how he had struggled hard against it, how
not even despair itself had been able to crush it; how it had gone on
and inc