it could be
scarcely felt; yet there was no indication of heart disease, of
which such sudden lowering of life is in itself sometimes a warning
indication. The change would pass away after a few minutes, during which
she seemed unconscious, or, at least, never spoke--never appeared to
heed what was said to her. But in the expression of her countenance
there was no character of suffering or distress; on the contrary,
a wondrous serenity, that made her beauty more beauteous, her very
youthfulness younger; and when this spurious or partial kind of syncope
passed, she recovered at once without effort, without acknowledging
that she had felt faint or unwell, but rather with a sense of recruited
vitality, as the weary obtain from a sleep. For the rest her spirits
were more generally light and joyous than I should have premised from
her mother's previous description. She would enter mirthfully into the
mirth of young companions round her: she had evidently quick perception
of the sunny sides of life; an infantine gratitude for kindness; an
infantine joy in the trifles that amuse only those who delight in tastes
pure and simple. But when talk rose into graver and more contemplative
topics, her attention became earnest and absorbed; and sometimes a rich
eloquence, such as I have never before nor since heard from lips so
young, would startle me first into a wondering silence, and soon into a
disapproving alarm: for the thoughts she then uttered seemed to me too
fantastic, too visionary, too much akin to the vagaries of a wild though
beautiful imagination. And then I would seek to check, to sober,
to distract fancies with which my reason had no sympathy, and the
indulgence of which I regarded as injurious to the normal functions of
the brain.

When thus, sometimes with a chilling sentence, sometimes with a
half-sarcastic laugh, I would repress outpourings frank and musical
as the songs of a forest-bird, she would look at me with a kind of
plaintive sorrow,--often sigh and shiver as she turned away. Only in
those modes did she show displeasure; otherwise ever sweet and docile,
and ever, if, seeing that I had pained her, I asked forgiveness,
humbling herself rather to ask mine, and brightening our reconciliation
with her angel smile. As yet I had not dared to speak of love; as yet I
gazed on her as the captive gazes on the flowers and the stars through
the gratings of his cell, murmuring to himself, "When shall the doors
unclose?"