Page:Duty and Inclination 2.pdf/234

232 when engaged in the dance, as light and gay as any: but how willingly would she forego such pleasures for more solid ones, renounce all flattery and adulation, could she secure to herself the affections of one. It is to dispel her cares, and dissipate thought, that she flies into company, heedless even of the public estimation; absorbed by one ruling and prevailing sentiment, while seeming to laugh away time, her heart is lacerated. It is in secret only that her real feelings are made manifest: knowing which, I cannot bring myself to throw a check upon her moments of apparent recreation, to involve her in melancholy at home."

Douglas was too well acquainted with grief not to feel moved by Mrs. Melbourne's description of it in her protégée, "What sorrow can she have," thought he, "unless she laments her fate as an orphan? the loss of parents? But these she lost so young, and Mrs. Melbourne so fully supplies the place of a mother. Is it love which has penetrated her young heart?" For whom, he durst not venture to inquire; an inquisitiveness on such a point might be thought presumptuous.

After a pause, during which Mrs. Melbourne had seemed struggling for utterance, she said, "You are evidently, Major Douglas, much interested in the fate of Ellina."