Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/166

164 expecting him for hours. How many changes had passed over her mind during that time! At first, there had been only that intense and passionate delight which fills the very soul at the thought of seeing a beloved object. Gradually came on the wonder of the loving heart, that any thing in the world could induce him to delay such happiness. Then thoughts, less entirely of eager and uncalculating affection, intervened:—the flattered and spoiled beauty was surprised that she should be kept waiting. But mortification was of short endurance. Henrietta felt too deeply for small vanity, she soon grew anxious; and if there be one torture which the demons, who delight in human misery, might rejoice to inflict, it is the anxious suspense of love acting upon an imaginative temperament. It is extraordinary the power of creation with which the mind seems suddenly endowed, and only to suppose the worst. Death, sickness, crime, misfortune,—these are the images which start upon the solitude made fearful with their presence. But there mingled among them, for Lady