Page:Ethel Churchill 1.pdf/202

196 God! how madly I have loved her—madly, indeed, since it made me forget the gulf that nature has set between us—she so beautiful, and I, as she has just said, who only resemble my kind to disgrace it! Yet she sought me first, she led me on, she taught me to think that the utter prostration of the heart was something in her eyes—that a mind like hers could appreciate mind. Fool, fool, that I have been! What have I done, that I should be thus set apart from my kind,—disfigured, disgraced, immeasurably wretched? O! that I might lay my weary head on my mother earth, and die!" "We could not spare you," exclaimed Lady Marchmont, taking his hand affectionately,—the tears starting in her eyes; "but not for this moment's mortification must you forget your other friends—how much even strangers love and admire you. Think of your own glorious genius, and on the happiness which it bestows. I have but one relative in the world: he is an old solitary man; and I think of him with cheerfulness, whenever I send him a new page of yours. I speak but as one of many who