And so, for her sake, he actually did violence
to his own love for the quiet retirement of the vale, and bore her to
the care of Donna Emilie de Castro; seeing nothing, feeling nothing,
but the admiration she excited, and that she was indeed the loveliest
there. One wish he had, and that was, that his nephew could have been
there likewise; but being engaged at that time on some important
private business for the Queen, Ferdinand did not even know that his
cousin had ever left the vale.
That his child's affections could be excited towards any but those of
her own race was a circumstance so impossible, and moreover a sin so
fearful, that it never entered Manuel's mind: he knew not woman's
nature, dreamed not of its quick impulses, its passionate yearnings,
its susceptibility towards all gentle emotions, or he could not have
so trustingly believed in the power of her peculiar faith and creed
to guard her from the danger. Even his dearest desire that she should
become the wife of her cousin she knew not; for the father shrunk from
revealing it to either his child or nephew, unless Ferdinand loved
and sought her himself. What therefore had she to warn her from the
precipice on which she stood, when new, strange, yet most exquisitely
sweet emotions gradually obtained possession of her heart in her daily
intercourse with Arthur Stanley? What they were indeed she knew not;
the word love was never uttered by either; she only knew that his
presence, his voice, the pressure of his hand, brought with it a
thrilling sensation of intense happiness, such as she had never known,
never imagined before.
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