Another moment and
he had turned from her coldly, and she was drooping towards the
earth like a tender vine bereft of the support to which it had held
by its clinging tendrils. Ah! If he could only have shut out these
images! If he could have erased the record so that Memory could not
read it! How eagerly would he have drunk of Lethe's waters, could he
have found the fabled stream!
More than all this. The rebuke of Miss Linmore almost maddened him.
In turning from Edith, he had let his heart go out towards the other
with a passionate devotion. Pride in her beauty and brilliant
accomplishments had filled his regard with a selfishness that could
ill bear the shock of a sudden repulse. Sleepless was the night that
followed; and when the morning, long looked for, broke at last, it
brought no light for his darkened spirit. Yet he had grown calmer,
and a gentle feeling pervaded his bosom. Thrown off by Miss Linmore,
his thoughts now turned by a natural impulse, as the needle, long
held by opposing attraction, turns to its polar point, again towards
Edith Walter. As he thought of her longer and longer, tenderer
emotions began to tremble in his heart.
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