Page:Horrid Mysteries Volume 3.djvu/97

 laughed. Caroline animated him with half concealed and half visible caresses, and the warmth of friendship soon blazed perceptibly up in the flame of love. Every member of our happy society was charmed with the dear object of our love, and applauded his enchanting ideas; I alone sat mute, and, at the sight of his happiness, felt myself consumed by a secret fire, for which I neither could nor would account.

Here begins a period of my life, on which I cannot reflect without despising myself; in which I was misled by a glowing passion to forget every thing that was dear to me, and that I ever should have held sacred. And, gracious Heaven! what a passion? Not that of a first love, in which the heated blood urges us to sacrifice all prejudices, and every idea that opposes our desires; it was not that love which boldly breaks all the fetters of human nature, and even tears all other softer ties; no, it was a passion kindled by jealousy after the first bloom of life was past,