Page:Francesca Carrara 3.pdf/93

90 habitual—and the feelings, denied the resource of sympathy, take refuge in sarcasm.

But Lucy's was too yielding and tearful a nature for this strong endurance and hidden suffering. She was like those fragile creepers which, flung off from the protection of one branch, cling intuitively to the next. Her love for Francis Evelyn was an emanation of that romance which is in the heart of every girl; her preference was as much circumstance as choice, and strengthened by no comparison. It was the natural consequence of solitude, and the belief in the necessity of having a lover, which flutters round the very youthful fancy; and Francis was the only young and handsome cavalier who happened to have been thrown in her way. And perhaps the attachment owed half its power to its concealment and to its silence. Had she married him, she would have been very miserable—her beauty would inevitably have lost, in his eyes, its charm with its novelty; and then all her real deficiencies would have been suddenly discovered, besides many which would only have existed in his own fancy. Nothing could have given her the tact, the presence of mind, the quick perception, the self-control necessary to success in society; and her sweetness and gentleness would