Her mother, having made her appearance, soon employed the youth in
occasional discourse, which furnished sufficient opportunity to the
betrothed to pursue their own conversation, in a quiet corner of the
same room, in that under-tone which, where lovers are concerned, is of
all others the most delightful and emphatic. True love is always timid:
he, too, as well as fear, is apt to "shrink back at the sound himself
has made." His words are few and the tones feeble. He throws his
thoughts into his eyes, and they speak enough for all his purposes. On
the present occasion, however, he was dumb from other influences, and
the hesitating voice, the guilty look, the unquiet manner, sufficiently
spoke, on the part of her lover, what his own tongue refused to whisper
in the ears of the maiden. He strove, but vainly, to relate the
melancholy event to which we have already sufficiently alluded. His
words were broken and confused, but she gathered enough, in part, to
comprehend the affair, though still ignorant of the precise actors and
sufferers.
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