Page:Duty and Inclination 2.pdf/167

Rh not be an absolute requisite in the married state, but that a sufficiency is, my own experience has but too well verified."

Little did he recollect how quickly, in the sensitive period of youth, when the heart of either sex is sensible of a congenial harmony, the judgment becomes entangled by the delusions of love;—thus, in that beautiful solitude, thrown upon each other for society, partaking of the same recreative amusements, rural sports, and intellectual pleasures, Oriana and Philimore yielded to the persuasive force of a mutual affection, and abandoned themselves to its guidance, little conceiving what regret, what contrition, was to follow!—of which the General, with that credulity natural to him, remained in perfect ignorance, and the more so, from the full persuasion he entertained that Philimore was far too honourable to seek to win upon the affections of one of his daughters, unsanctioned by the joint concurrence of their mother and himself.

How widely was he deceived in respect to Philimore as well as Oriana, who, living but in the consciousness of being beloved, suffered the voice of duty and of prudence to slumber, falsely seeking to exculpate herself with the notion that, guided by Philimore, she could not err! If he who ever walked in the path religion prescribed, whose