There are some such characters, which, like plants, stretch upwards to
the light; they accept what nourishes, they reject what injures them.
They die if wounded,--blossom if fortunate; but never learn to analyze
all this, or find its reasons; but, if they tell their story, it is in
Emily's way;--"it was so;" "I found it so."
I talked with V----, and found him, as I expected, not the peer of her
he loved, except in love. His passion was at its height. Better
acquainted with the world than Emily,--not because he had seen it
more, but because he had the elements of the citizen in him,--he had
been at first equally emboldened and surprised by the ease with which
he won her to listen to his suit. But he was soon still more surprised
to find that she would only listen. She had no regard for her position
in society as a married woman,--none for her vow. She frankly
confessed her love, so far as it went, but doubted as to whether it
was _her whole love_, and doubted still more her right to leave
L----, since she had returned to him, and could not break the bond so
entirely as to give them firm foot-hold in the world.
"I may make you unhappy," she said, "and then be unhappy myself; these
laws, this society, are so strange, I can make nothing of them.
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