Page:Glenarvon (Volume 1).djvu/250

 coloured butterfly, which ranges ever from flower to flower, spreading its light pinions in the summer breeze, or basking in the smiles of fortune, for which my life is consumed, my soul is scorched with living fire, and my mind is impaired and lost! Oh would to heaven that it were! No arts, no crimes were then required to win and to enjoy. The pulse of passion beats high within her, and pleads for the lover who dares to ask. Wild fancy, stimulated by keen sensibility and restless activity of mind, without employment, render her easy to be approached, and easy to be influenced and worked upon. Love is the nature of these favourites of fortune: from earliest infancy—they feel its power! and their souls enervated, live but upon its honied vows. Chaste—pure! What are these terms? The solitary recluse is not chaste, as I have heard; and these, never—never."

"Yet Lady Margaret you say is un