Page:Demon ship, or, The pirate of the Mediterranean.pdf/3

Rh of seventeen can be sentimental, but there are few stoics in their teens. I love to be coldly great. You charm me.'—'If heartlessness and mental superiority are with you synonymes,' I said, with gravity, 'count yourself, Miss Cameron, at the very acmé of intellectual greatness, since you can take leave of one of your earliest friends with such easy indifference.'—'Pooh! pooh! I know you are not really going. This voyage to India is one of your favourite threats in your dignified moments. I think this is ahoutabout [sic] the twentieth time it has been made. And for early friends, and so forth, you have contrived to live within a few hundred feet of them without coming in their sight for the last month; so they eannotcannot [sic] be so very dear.'—'Listen to me, Margaret,' said I, with a grave, and, as I think, manly dignity of hearing; 'I offered you the honest and ardent, though worthless gift of a heart, whose best affections you entirely possessed. I am not eoxcombcoxcomb [sic] enough to suppose that I can at pleasure storm the affections of any woman; but I am man enough to expect that they should he denied me with some reference to the delicate respect due to mine. But you are, of course, at full liberty to choose your own mode of rejecting your suitors; only, as one who still views you as a friend, I would that that manner shewed more of good womanly feeling, and less of conscious female power. I am aware, Margaret, that this is not the general language of lovers; perhaps if it were, woman might hold her power more gracefully, and even Margaret Cameron's heart would have more of greatness and generosity than it now possesses.' While I spoke, Margaret turned away her lovely face, and I saw that her very neck was suffused. I took her hand, assured her that the journey I had announced was no lover's ruse, and that I was really on the point of quitting my native land.—'And now, Margaret,' I said, 'farewell—you will scarce find in life a more devoted friend—a more ardent desirer of your happiness, than him you have driven from your side.' I stretched out my hand to Margaret for a friendly farewell clasp. But she held not out her's in return; she spoke not a word of adieu. I turned an indignant countenance towards her, and, to my unutterable surprise, heheldbeheld [sic] my beautiful young friend in a swoon. And was this the heingbeing [sic] I had accused of want of feeling! We left the garden solemnly plighted to each other. But I pass briefly over this portion of my history. I was condemned by the will of Captain Cameron, and by the necessity of obtaining some professional promotion, to spend a few years in India before I could receive the hand of Margaret.

I reaehedreached [sic] my Asiatic destination—long and anxiously